


love will find a way

by anddirtyrain



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Drama, F/F, Family Fluff, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2018-07-25 13:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7535380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anddirtyrain/pseuds/anddirtyrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke, Lexa, and their three children are set to enjoy two weeks of vacation in paradise, but the idyllic getaway quickly turns into a nightmare when a tsunami rises from the sea, destroying everything in its path. Suddenly, the Griffin-Woods family is ripped apart, separated in a strange country with a different language, lost among the wreckage and the pain the water left behind. </p><p>In conditions like those, its a struggle to find hope -but they try.</p><p>Based on the movie The Impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 “It’s not fair!”

“Life isn’t fair.”

“Why do I have to go?!” he screams more than asks.

“Because!” Lexa exclaims, finally losing her calm. She rubs the space between her eyebrows, the hints of a headache coming on.

“That’s not a f- that’s not an answer!”

Even in the midsts of a discussion, she’s at least glad her son won’t curse. There’s that. Lexa sighs.

“Aden, please. Just pack your bag, or I’ll do it for you.”

He huffs and slams the bedroom door, but a few minutes later Lexa can hear him angrily packing -if there’s such a thing. At least, she hears the sound of drawers opening, and she hopes it is to find his swimming trunks and not set his clothes on fire in one last ditch attempt to skip the trip.

Lexa walks back to the bedroom, checking on the little ones in front of the TV first. She doesn’t like arguing with their brother in front of them, and she’s glad that the re-runs of Go, Diego, go! have kept them entertained.

“He never fights with me,” Clarke mentions the minute Lexa walks in the room.

“Do you want him to fight with you?” Lexa asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed. She twists her neck from side to side, feeling a few kinks. Aden is usually a good kid, incredibly well behaved. Not tonight.

“No, I mean…It’s like he doesn’t even bother, you know? To fight with me,” Clarke says, putting down her tablet. “It’s like at the end of the day you’re his mother.”

Lexa turns around.

“We’re his mothers, Clarke.”

“You were his mom before I showed up,” she says. “I’ve known him for only half his life.”

“The better half. The best half.” Lexa leans down and presses a kiss to the nearest part of Clarke -her knee. “Our family wasn’t complete without you.”

“You are a real sweet-talker aren’t you?”

“Mmhn.” Lexa nods, and lays down her head on Clarke’s thigh. “He only fights with me because he knows I’m the one who’s going to ground his pre-teen ass if he steps out of line,” she says, and even from her spot she can see Clarke bites her lip, though it fails to hide her smile. “You’d just tell him to ask me. Or take him out for ice-cream after I ground him.”

“That was one time,” Clarke says, running her hand up and down Lexa’s back. Lexa melts into Clarke’s body, and Clarke smiles openly now. She itches to sit up and kiss the impish smile off her lips. Lexa has never been able to be close to Clarke like this, and not touch her, not kiss her. Her affection spills out of her even after nearly a decade together.

“Where did that come from?” Lexa asks quietly, and Clarke’s body stiffens up beneath her.

“Clarke?” she asks again, sitting up. Clarke sighs.

“Jake was asking Aden about his school project, the one with the family tree?”

“Yeah.”

“Aden told Jake that I wasn’t his mom. That he hadn’t been in either of our tummies like he and Milla. And we haven’t kept the fact he’s adopted a secret, but Jake’s five, I could tell it confused him.”

“Why didn’t you tell m-”

“You were busy with work,” Clarke says, and it almost manages not to sound reproachful. “Jake and I talked about it, he’s good. And, I mean. It’s the truth. But I’d hoped that after so long-”

“That’s always going to be part of his story,” Lexa says. “It doesn’t mean he loves us any less.”

“I know,” Clarke says, but she still looks over Lexa’s shoulder. Her conflicted expression is one of the few she doesn’t like on her wife. “…He’s been calling me by my name for the past couple of weeks.”

“I noticed it this morning,” Lexa says quietly. “I’m sorry I was so busy that we haven’t really talked-”

“It’s okay,” Clarke says.

“It’s not.”

Clarke looks down at the mattress, and grabs Lexa’s hand.

“It’s not,” Clarke concedes, rubbing her thumb over Lexa’s knuckles. “But we’re going on vacation tomorrow. We can talk then. I’ll get you to myself for two whole weeks.”

Lexa smiles.

“Mama!” A shrill little voice sounds from the hallway, and Lexa knows it means in a few seconds they’ll be overrun.

“I think you might have to share.”

  
//

  
It’s true what she told Clarke, she never felt as complete as she did until she met her.

Her family didn't feel whole. It didn’t matter if Lexa had adopted Aden before she ever met Clarke, back then she was just drifting, trying her best. She was just a lawyer who got a child abandonment case she couldn’t let go off. She spent so long pretending to be a mother or a sister or whatever a scared three-year-old boy might need. After Clarke it didn't feel like pretending. She made Lexa brave.

They were together for only two years before Lexa got down on one knee and asked her to become her wife.

They’d only been married for a few months when they decided to go through with IVF and Clarke got pregnant with Jake. With Aden around, it had never been just them, and there was no point in waiting. Clarke was an only child, and she wanted more than one kid. Lexa wanted to give Clarke everything she wanted.

Clarke was a natural.

She breezed through her pregnancy and had a quick, easy delivery at home, and she got breastfeeding on the first try. Lexa didn’t. Jake was three when they decided to try again, and Lexa wanted to carry the baby. She saw Clarke through her pregnancy and for the first time felt that stirring of what if.

It wasn’t the same.

Lexa hated being pregnant. She was always too warm and always nauseous, and she’d felt robbed. There was no glow. She was tired, and she missed her more intense exercise routines in the mornings and sharing glasses of wine with Clarke and it all made her feel guilty. It convinced her she wouldn’t be a good mom to their daughter, and that the tiny squirming thing inside of her could feel it.

She’d never been more scared than while she gave birth, and only Clarke’s hands on her cheeks and her constant reassurances that ‘you’re doing so well, baby. I love you. I promise you’re doing so well’ were what got her through. Lexa gave birth kneeling on a mat in the floor of the birthing center, her head on Clarke’s shoulder. Clarke caught their daughter and laid her down on Lexa’s chest, and it was one of the best moments of her life.

Afterward Clarke would tell her, time and time again, that it wasn’t a competition, that she was an amazing mother, but Lexa still doubted herself whenever their baby girl wouldn’t calm down at once when put in her arms. Clarke would hold her through nights like those, rub her back and she’d apologize for being like that because they’d just had a baby, she was supposed to be happy. Clarke understood. And a few months later, when Milla was a little bigger and smiled at Lexa for the first time, all those doubts went down the drain.

Lexa loves her family, she lives for them. Clarke teases her for being a softy, but she couldn’t help but cry when Aden graduated from elementary school last year. Her heart positively clenches whenever Milla or Jake call her ‘mama’. It’s something she never knew she wanted, never thought she would get.

 

//

 

“What are you thinking about?” Clarke asks later that night, once Lexa is sitting a their vanity, calmly undoing her braid.

“How much I love you and the kids,” Lexa says simply, and she’s never been more honest.

It took half an hour to put everyone to bed, and she relished every goodnight kiss and extra glass of water her five year old son and three year old daughter asked for.

“Sweet talker,” Clarke says, walking behind her and pressing a kiss to her jaw.

Lexa smiles at her in the mirror.

“I’m not sure it counts as sweet talk if it’s true.”

Clarke smiles back.

“Wanna take a bath?” Clarke asks softly, kneading Lexa’s shoulders with care. LExa begins to feel the long day at work and her fight with Aden and carrying Jake on her shoulders. If anyone knows when she’s stressed and needing a little pampering, it’s her wife.

She nods.

“I’ll go get the water running,” Clarke whispers, pressing one last kiss to Lexa’s cheek.

  
//

  
It’s more about feeling close and relaxing than getting release.

They have a plane to catch in the morning and precious hours of sleep to get before that. It’s not them asking Raven to take the kids for a day so they can get away with not leaving the bed for hours.

They bump mouths a few times and Lexa yelps when Clarke presses her again the cold wall tiles. Clarke shushes her, pressing her fingertips to Lexa’s lips before grabbing the nape of her neck and bringing her down for a long kiss.

They’ve gotten down the art of loving each other quietly.

Quickly, too, when the time it takes for the bathtub to fill with warm soapy water is enough for them to bring each other to climax with mirroring hands between each other’s legs.

When they finally slip into the tub Lexa has a hard time not falling asleep.

Clarke massages her back with care and washes her hair, before letting Lexa rest against her front. Clarke wraps her arms around her, and she sinks until her chin is just above the water.

She runs her hands over Clarke’s thighs at either side of her, with no intent other than feeling her wife, so soft and yet solid beneath her, around her. Years and motherhood have only made Clarke more beautiful.

They only step out when the water has gone cold.

They get dressed on the same side of the bed, and it might be silly but it’s those moments that Lexa cherishes, the fact that even in the same room, the same bed, doing something as inane as drying themselves off -they have to be close.

She pulls on a pair of worn pajama pants that she’s not sure who they originally belonged to.

“I’m making the rounds,” she tells Clarke softly, kissing her shoulder before she tugs down a shirt and leaves their room.

Her first stop is the bedroom on her right at the end of the hall. White fluorescent light slips out through the crack beneath the door.

Lexa knocks softly on the door.

“Aden, it’s 1 am,” she says. “Please, go to bed.”

She waits, but the light doesn’t turn off.

“Aden, I know you heard me.”

She doubts he’s awake for a second, but then hears grumbling coming from inside.

“What was that?”

“I don’t want to go to Thailand. The least you could do is let me talk to my friends before I leave.”

Lexa sighs, and then pushes the door open.

“Mom! Can you knock?”

He sits on his bed, the glow from his laptop illuminating the whole room.

“Aden, it’s 1 in the morning.”

“You’re awake,” he argues. Lexa doesn’t have it in her to sigh again. She knows he doesn’t want to go, that spending Christmas and New Year away from his friends and his city doesn’t sit well with him, but she needed this vacation. Clarke told her if she didn’t leave the city she’d just get sucked into work like the year before, and Lexa knows that to be true. So she and Clarke agreed a family vacation is what they needed, just the five of them. Her 13 year old son disagrees.

“You’ll have wi-fi there, you know?” She tells Aden. “We’re not going to the middle of nowhere.”

“Feels like it,” he mumbles.

“Go to bed. Now.”

He shuts his laptop with a groan before getting under the covers.

“Good night,” she tells him before closing the door. Aden doesn’t answer.

Her next and last stop is the kids’ room. The faint purple glow of a night light illuminates part of the room. Jake is out like a light, his shirt riding up his tummy as he lays spread out like a starfish.

Lexa smiles at the sight.

She pulls his shirt down and pulls the covers over his body again, though she knows he’ll probably kick them off before it’s morning.

She straightens up, getting the odd feeling of being watched.

From the bed on the other side of the room, a pair of green eyes follow her movements.

“Are you awake?” Lexa asks softly, walking toward the other bed. She lays her hand on the safety railing. Milla doesn’t answer. She’s a quiet girl, much like Lexa was, and she has trouble sleeping through the night sometimes.

“Do you want to sleep with your mommies tonight?” Lexa asks.

Milla nods, her big eyes blinking slowly. She extends an arm softly toward Lexa, a plead to be picked up.

“Okay. Come here, baby.”

Lexa grabs her under her armpits and hoists her up, and Milla wraps her legs and arms around Lexa like a tiny koala.

“It’s okay,” she coos as she walks back to the master bedroom, where Clarke is now under the covers, waiting for her.

“We have a visitor,” Lexa announces.

“Hey, monkey,” Clarke greets Milla, who Lexa lays down softly on the bed. The toddler crawls until she’s at Clarke’s side, plopping down on her side. She immediately moves to suck her thumb, but Clarke holds her small hand and firmly pulls it away.

“No, okay?” Clarke says, patting her hand. She’s been trying to get the three year old off the habit. Milla is too sleepy to protest.

Lexa lays down next to them and rubs up and down Milla’s back, slowly lulling the child back to sleep. Eventually, her eyes fall closed.

Clarke turns around to turn off the bedside table lamp.

“Love you,” Clarke says trough the dark.

“I love you too,” Lexa tells her, and even after ten years together it doesn’t get old. “Goodnight.”

Their hands touch where they lay over their daughter, and Lexa feels so, so lucky.

  
//

 

“Are we all packed up?” Lexa asks, rolling the last of her and Clarke’s luggage to the living room.

“Mommy, up! Up!” Milla asks, chasing after Clarke. Clarke picks her up, settling the little girl on her waist.

“Are you ready?” Clarke asks. Lexa looks around, going over her mental checklist to see if they’re missing anything.

“I want Bunny,” she hears Milla plead.

“Okay, let’s look for him,” Clarke says.

“Clarke, have you seen my headphones?” Aden asks.

“I think I saw them on the couch, Aden.”

“How about you, Jake? Have you picked a toy to take with you already?” Lexa asks, looking around the floor for that damn stuffed animal. It’s always getting lost.

“I’m looking!”

“Okay, hurry please,” Lexa tells him. She catches sight of an off-white ear underneath the couch. Bingo.

“Bunny!” Milla squeals from her place in Clarke’s arms when Lexa approaches them with the beaut up stuffed bunny in hand.

“Are we all set?” Lexa asks Clarke, taking Milla from her arms.

“Aden can’t find his headphones-”

“I got them!”

“Jake?”

The little boy runs back to the living room, a superman plush in his hand.

“The car is here!” Aden calls out, and Lexa shares a look with Clarke. On days like this it almost feels like they can’t keep up.

It takes another 20 minutes to buckle in the kids and load up the luggage but finally, they’re on their way to the airport.

Lexa takes a breath once she’s inside the car.

Her fingers tangle with Clarke’s on her lap. It’s for moments like this for which she lives. In the midst of all their hectic days, regardless of how stressed she is or how hard work can get -Clarke is her constant. She’s her safe haven.

She doesn’t let go until they arrive at the airport.

  
//

 

“Mama. Aden is being mean to me.”

Jake looks up at Lexa with big blue eyes. Apart from the light brown hair, he’s a dead ringer for Clarke, right down to the pouty lips that he knows will get him anything he wants from her.

Lexa opens her arms and Jake climbs in. She hopes it’s a long time until he thinks twice before doing that.

Milla is asleep on her harness beside her, in between she and Clarke, who is also asleep. There is definitely more to children and parents than biology, because Clarke and Milla have the same expression when they sleep.

“What did he do?” she asks her youngest son.

“He won’t talk to me,” Jake whines. Lexa smiles and presses a kiss to his forehead. Being ignored is the worst offense their children can imagine, and she’s not okay with it but she’s glad. Jake sits up suddenly, his eyes lighting up. “Mama, the plane was shaking!”

“I know, it’s just a bit of turbulence,” she explains. “It’s okay.”

“I thought it was going to fall,” he says, the thing with Aden apparently forgotten.

“It won’t, I promise.”

Jake nods.

Lexa can tell her son believes her.

It was terrifying at first, when it was just her and Aden, knowing that he depended on her alone and what she said and how she acted would shape his world and even him. She’s slightly more used to it now, but it still catches her by surprise. Her son really believes she can keep a plane from falling, and that sort of innocent trust is something Lexa never takes for granted.

“Why don’t you sit here with mommy and Milla while I go talk to your brother?” she asks Jake, and he nods again.

She presses another kiss to his forehead before giving him her seat. She pulls down the tray and sets him up with one of Milla’s coloring books and some crayons.

“You could paint mommy a picture for when she wakes up,” Lexa suggests, running her hand through his hair. She walks back two, three rows until she finds Aden’s and Jake’s.

She wanted her whole family to be together in a row, but couldn’t manage it.

“He won’t stay still,” Aden says before she’s even sat down.

“He’s five and he’s never flown on a plane before, okay? He’s your brother, Aden.”

Aden looks out the window, moving his head in time with the music coming from his earphones.

“Aden. Are you going to be like this for the whole trip?” She asks, then reaches over and pulls an ear bud out. “Take those off, I’m talking to you.”

Aden looks insulted.

“I didn’t want to come,” he grumbles, the same litany Lexa has heard about a hundred times before.

“I know that, and I'm sorry,” she tells him. “But this is a family vacation. We needed this, okay?”

“Why do you two get to choose that?”

“Because we’re your mothers, Aden, sometimes we have to choose for all of us.”

“Clarke’s not my mother,” he says under his breath, looking away from her, and the words hurt Lexa-she can’t ever imagine Clarke having to hear them. She remembers every date Clarke insisted she take her son to when he was 5 and didn’t like sitters, every night Clarke was woken up by a six year old and welcomed him to their bed, how Clarke promised Aden they’d be a family after they married when he was 7. She remembers Clarke officially adopting Aden and making him Aden Griffin-Woods when he was 8.

Clarke might have come into their lives two years after she adopted him, but she was as much a mother to him as Lexa.

“Aden…”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have just been cleared to land at the Ranong airport. Please make sure one last time your seat belt is securely fastened. The flight attendants are currently passing around the cabin to make a final compliance check and pick up any remaining cups and glasses. Thank you.”

“Please fasten your seatbelt, ma’am,” a flight attendant asks Lexa. “We’re about to land.”

She nods, looking to the rows ahead. Jake’s head is sticking out into the hallway, and she can just see Clarke looking at her over the rows of seats. Clarke gives her a thumbs up from afar -one of the many signs they’ve adopted to let each other know things are good in a house full of noise. Lexa nods.

Jake disappears from sight, and she knows Clarke must have told him to sit upright and fastened the seatbelt. Lexa checks Aden’s before fastening her own.

“Do not say things like that,” she tells Aden.

“It’s not a lie, is it?” he ask, a forced bite behind his words.

“So I’m not your mother either?” Lexa asks, because in her eyes there’s no distinction between her and Clarke, there never has been. They’re the same to their children, where they give birth to them or not, whether they adopted him first or not -or at least so Lexa thought.

Aden shrugs and looks away

Lexa nods, swallowing through the knot in her throat.

  
//

  
“Sorry I left you with the little rascals,” Lexa tells Clarke once they’re unboarding.

“Is Aden okay?” Clarke asks, Milla on her hip.

“Yes, he’s just…being a teenager,” Lexa says. “Now you two…” She touches the tip of Milla’s nose before picking up Jake with a groan. “Never grow up, please.”

* * *

 

  
Aden walks around the rooms, eyeing the large space. A man from the hotel walks around with his moms, explaining everything.

“This is the children’s room,” he says, opening a door. Aden bristles up. He doesn’t like being called a child.

He steps between them to peek inside the room. There is a bed on either side, and another one on the other wall.

They leave, and Aden drags his suitcase inside. He picks the bed closest to the window and walks back out.

“What do you work on?” the man asks his mom.

“I work at a company, back in the states. We live in D.C.” she answers.

“The capital, very nice,” he says. He turns to Clarke. “And you?”

“I’m a doctor,” Clarke says quickly, “though I’m not working at the moment.”

The man nods.

“The kitchen is fully equipped, and there is a 24-hour store downstairs, just beside the lobby. We hope you enjoy your stay.”

The man leaves, and his moms start unpacking, while his little brother and sister run around, touching absolutely everything.

Aden thrums with energy, because while he might not have wanted to come, he can hear the ocean from where he’s standing, and the urge to just go explore is uncontainable. He walks back to the room and quickly goes through his suitcase to find his swimming trunks.

“Can I check out the pool?” he asks once he’s changed.

“Not without us,” Lexa says. “Please wait.”

“Did you put sunscreen on?” Clarke asks.

“Yeah, some.” He didn’t, but he’s not in the mood to be nagged. “Why can’t I go?”

“Can you wait until we get the kids ready?” Lexa asks.

“I won’t drown,” he says exaggeratedly. “I promise.”

“All right. Just the children’s pool! Aden!”

  
//

  
Their room is on the second floor, and after going down a short flight of stairs, Aden is faced with an ample garden. He can’t see the ocean, and with a look at the building behind him, he wonders if he can risk running there and back before his moms -before his mom and Clarke are back.

He decides not to do it, and rather goes around to find the pool.

It’s not fair.

They don’t go to the beach that often, only when his mom can get time off work a few times a year. And last month when one of his classmates organized a trip there, Clarke didn’t let him go because he was ‘only 13’. That was bullshit. That’s when he started calling her Clarke, because Lexa told him to listen to his mother and he didn’t like what he was hearing.

And now he can’t even go to check out the beach because they’re too busy with the little kids.

It’s not that he hates them; he loves them, he loves his family. He’d never say he hates them. He’s just mad at his mom’s…but most of all at Clarke. It’s weird to call her that, after so many years of calling her mom.

Before Milla and Jake were born they would go out every Friday, just the two of them, but when his brother was born he would tag along and Clarke would be all over him. And then Milla was born and they stopped going out every Friday all together. It’s not that he’s jealous, he’s not, it’s just that it isn’t fair. He doesn’t remember his life before Lexa, doesn’t really have any memory of being in the system, but he knows enough to know that parents forgetting about their adopted kids when they get real ones is a common fear.

He’s not jealous, but maybe his siblings bother him a little, because his moms’ attention are always on them, and they only pay attention to Aden to berate him for having his laptop on too late, or because his room is dirty, or to ask him to babysit.

And he didn’t want to come here anyways.

“Aden, Aden, Aden,” he hears Jake behind him. “Can we play? I brought my ball.”

”Aden, please play with your brother for a bit,” Lexa says before he can even answer.

“I was going to, you don’t have to tell me,” he grumbles. “Come on,” he tells Jake, before jumping on the pool.

  
//

  
He laughs so hard during dinner at something his Mom says he snorts soda all over the floor.

He has so much fun he forgets he’s supposed to be mad. He forgets he didn’t want to come at all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke carries Milla when they return from dinner, while Jake clings to Lexa’s back. Clarke’s skin feels mercifully cool -she’ll never forget the sun burn she got in her honeymoon- while Lexa is already tan. Earlier, at the beach, Clarke rolled her eyes when Lexa batted her hands away and told her to behave. In Clarke’s defense, she really was only trying to protect her wife by re-applying sunblock.

Clarke has missed this, the playful banter, the sneaking kisses. It only cements her belief that a long vacation away from everything is exactly what her family needed.

They settle down in front of the TV once they’re back to their rooms, Jake and Milla nestled in their arms as a Christmas film plays on the screen. With the beach and the sun as opposed to the snow in D.C., it almost doesn’t feel like the year is ending.

Lexa stands up about halfway through, leaving Clarke as sole pillow for two very tired children.

When a good chunk of the movie goes by and she doesn’t return, Clarke stands up, gently letting Jake and Milla lay down on the couch.

“Lexa?” she calls out.

“I’m good,” she hears back. “I’m just using the bathroom, love!”

Clarke walks into the bathroom -after 10 years together and one birth each, inane things like bodily functions no longer matter- but although she finds Lexa on the toilet, the lid is down, and she’s quietly speaking into her cell phone.

Lexa jumps when she notices her, and Clarke crosses her arms.

“I can’t believe you,” she whispers, ever mindful of the phone call.

“Of course,” Lexa says into the phone. “Yes, of course. I’ll get on it. I have to go. Yes, thank you.”

“Who was that on the phone?” Clarke asks the second the call is closed.

Lexa looks guilty as fuck when she meets her eyes.

“…Indra,” she says. “I just needed-”

“You’re working?” Clarke asks, disbelieving. “Even here.” The entire point of this vacation was for them to get away from their responsibilities for two weeks. Apparently Lexa can’t manage a single day.

“It was just one phone call,” Lexa says.

“Mama?” Jake stands in the hallway, looking at them curiously.

“Come here Jake, they’re talking about grown up stuff,” Aden says, putting his hand on Jake’s shoulder and taking him back to the living room. “Milla is passed out on the couch,” he informs them, looking back.

Clarke nods.

“You know I have to be at Indra’s beck and call,” Lexa defends herself. “I -we need that promotion.”

“Maybe we don’t,” Clarke fires back. “Maybe it’s just time I went back to work.”

“Is that what you want?” Lexa asks her.

“I wasn’t supposed to stay home forever,” Clarke tells her. Clarke had plans to specialize, and she put them on hold to take care of their children when Lexa went back to work after having Milla. They didn’t want to leave a 3 year old, a 9 year old, and a baby with a babysitter for most of the day, and so Clarke offered to stay home for a while, reeling from how demanding working in the ER was. A year turned into two, and she loves her family, but she misses practicing medicine.

Lexa nods, recognizing the words for what they are.

“Mommy!” Jake screams this time.

“We can talk later,” Clarke tells her wife. “Let’s just get the kids to bed.”

  
//

  
Clarke picks up her daughter from the couch, and the toddler is so out of it she doesn’t wake. It was a long day for the three year old, and Clarke thinks their baby won’t have trouble sleeping through the night with how tired she was.

She puts her down on the bed next to the wall, brushing away her hair. It’s the color of Lexa’s own. Everything Milla is a small version of Lexa, right down to her eyes, and Clarke absolutely loves it.

She can hear Lexa supervising Jake washing his teeth in the adjoining bathroom. And she feels a small stab of anger that even now, when they’re supposed to be enjoying time together as a family, Lexa has managed to bring work with her. Clarke managed to put her career on hold to take care of their babies, for two and half years now, and Lexa can’t manage two weeks. But she also knows the only reason Lexa works so much is because she wants to give their children everything, and Clarke can never fault her for that.

Clarke sighs.

She stands up and walks to the bed on the other side of the room, giving a gentle squeeze to Aden’s ankle. He’s already covered up and turned away from the rest of the room.

“Goodnight,” she whispers. “I love you.”

“Night,” Aden says back. Clarke doesn’t like fighting with him, but she’d prefer that to this constant ignoring her Aden has been doing. She knows he’s mad at her, and she hates it.

They’ve always been close, more as comrades at the beginning, when she just started dating Lexa; which then developed into a closer relationship once she moved in. He started calling her mom just like he did Lexa when he was about 6, and it hurts Clarke that a single apparent offense will push him to go back to ‘Clarke’ nearly 7 years later. She believes Lexa when she says he’s just being a teenager, but it doesn’t mean she has to like it.

Lexa walks in that moment with Jake in tow, dressed in pajamas and with drooping lids.

“Hey, baby,” she says.

“Mommy.” He extends his arms to her and Clarke picks him up, only to lay him down on the bed. For a child, she supposes the trip makes sense.

“Can we see fish tomorrow?” he asks.

“We’ll see about that,” Clarke promises. She’s not sure if you can see fish that easily at the beach, but she can ask.

“Mama can take me because she can swim,” Jake affirms.

“Hey, I can swim too,” she says, mock offended. She can swim, just not as crazily good as Lexa. Lexa developed a taste for it when she was pregnant with Milla, and she never quit afterward.

“Not like Mama,” Jake points out. Clarke is aware.

“Yeah, not like Mama,” Lexa says softly before she presses a kiss to Clarke’s cheek. She is still a bit mad at Lexa, and knows her wife is trying to soften her. Their spats never last long.

“We can all go swimming in the morning,” Lexa promises Jake, kissing his forehead in goodnight.

“We’ll have a race?” he asks.

“Of course we’ll have a race,” Clarke tells him. “And I’ll win!” She tickles him and he squeals. Clarke hears Milla start to fuss behind her, but one look lets her know Lexa already has it. They’ve gotten good at that.

“Good night, baby.” She kisses Jake’s forehead, and he closes his eyes.

“Night.”

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

Clarke turn to find Lexa calming Milla back to sleep.

She coos sweet nothings to her while she rubs her back and pushes her hair away from her face.

Lexa is so good with their children. She’s so gentle. Clarke got a taste of it watching Lexa with Aden when he was little, but it was still so different from watching her cradle a newborn in her arms, with all the care of someone who handles glass, yet the fierceness of a lioness in her eyes.

“Mommy. No sleep,” Milla mumbles, and Lexa doubles over to press a kiss to her cheek.

“We have to sleep now so we can have fun tomorrow, don’t we?” she whispers.

Milla twists around, her eyes fighting to stay open.

“Shhh.” Lexa pats her side, and little by little Clarke can see sleep take over. “That’s my girl,” Lexa says.

She’s seen this a million times, but Clarke still smiles at the sight.

Lexa turns off the light in the room when they leave, and then makes her way to the kitchen. It’s apparent to Clarke she’s giving her some space. She walks to their bedroom and gets into bed, the sheets cool and soft around her.

It’s only five minutes later when Lexa appears.

She stands by the doorway, looking at her with these eyes, this particular gaze she gets when she wants something.

“Oh, come here,” Clarke says. She swears Lexa can give their toddler a run for her money when it comes to pouty lips and sad eyes. Lexa climbs into the bed, her arms immediately closing around Clarke’s form.

“Only way you’re getting out of this conversation is if I don't see that work cell the rest of the trip, are we clear?”

Lexa guiltily nods against her chest. Clarke just -she melts into the mattress. It’s true Lexa promised her she wouldn’t work during their vacation, but she can’t be mad at her wife for too long, and she specially doesn’t want to put a damper in their trip. She sinks her fingers in Lexa’s hair and feels her sigh. “And we’ll talk about me going back to work when we go home.”

“Okay,” Lexa says. “It’s your choice, whatever you want. We’ll find a place to take care of Milla.”

“I love our children,” Clarke feels the need to point out.

“I know.”

“I just miss being a doctor and not just a mom. I need to see actual human beings.”

“And our kids are aliens,” Lexa says, no hint of mockery in her tone.

“Yes,” Clarke agrees. She bites at a smile.

Lexa pulls away from her hiding place against Clarke’s chest, her eyes sparkling, and seals their reconciliation with a small kiss.

“I would’ve told you Indra called,” Lexa says.

“I know, you dork,” Clarke tells her. They don’t lie to each other, not about anything, be it small or big. Lexa specially feels awfully guilty when she keeps things from her, and Clarke secretly cherishes that. “Indra is nothing but respectful, though, so if she called it’s because you told her she could.”

“…I’m sorry. I would’ve mentioned it tomorrow,” Lexa promises.

“I know,” she says, kissing her forehead. “We’re in Thailand, Lexa. This is a vacation.” She pushes Lexa’s hair behind her ear, and Lexa nuzzles her palm. “We can hear the waves crashing outside… We had seafood and wine for dinner. Now isn’t that romantic?”

“I’m too tired to have sex,” Lexa confesses regretfully. “But if you want-”

“Me too,” Clarke says.

“Tell me we’re not getting old,” Lexa pleads.

“You’re older than me,” Clarke playfully replies.

“By two years. If I’m getting old you’re getting old.”

“No one I’d rather do it with,” Clarke tells her. She loves these quiet moments with Lexa, when the kids are asleep and the house -in this case, their rented rooms on the other side of the world- are quiet. Lexa burrows into Clarke’s side, resting her head on her breasts, and Clarke smiles.

“I’m 36,” Lexa says quietly. “I’m not old.”

She sounds so dour Clarke laughs, and Lexa whines.

“You’re in your late thirties, I’m in my early thirties,” Clarke teases, lightly tickling Lexa’s side. Lexa pushes her hand away and settles down on her pillow, keeping her arm around Clarke’s stomach. Her eyes close.

“Two…years…”

“I love you, old lady,” Clarke says, kissing her wife’s cheek.

“I love you too, Lexa whispers, cuddling even closer.

Clarke turns off the lamp on the bedside table. The room is plunged in darkness, the only light coming in through the floor to ceiling windows leading out to the balcony. She’s never seen the moon shine so bright. Clarke itches to grab her camera and take pictures of its light on the water, but -settling down on the bed- decides to do it tomorrow.

After all, she has something just as beautiful right here. 


	2. Chapter 2

Lexa starts with her shoulders, brushes her lips over the freckles brought on by the sun. Waking Clarke up in the morning has long since been one of her favorite activities, bleary eyes and morning breath notwithstanding.  She loves her wife first thing in the morning.

She kisses Clarke’s cheek, brushes away the sweaty hair stuck to her forehead from a night under the covers. Clarke’s nose scrunches up, and Lexa smiles.  
  
“Merry Christmas,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to Clarke’s lips. The corners turn up in a smile.  
  
“It’s 5 in the morning,” Clarke complains, but still turns a little, opening her arms for Lexa to come closer, cuddle right up to her.  
  
“I know. Sorry.”  
  
Clarke doesn’t open her eyes.  
  
“Shhh, come back to bed,” she says.  
  
Lexa kisses her nose.

 "We _are_ in bed,” she says, laying her head back down on the pillow, her forehead against her wife’s.

“Let’s go back to sleep, then,” Clarke says, throwing her arm over Lexa’s waist.

“I have a better idea,” Lexa says quietly, letting her hands wander.

“ _Oh_.” Clarke melts even further against her. “I like your idea better. You’re so smart. I’m so glad I married you.”

Lexa hides a chuckle against Clarke’s cheek.

“Wait, is the door-”

“Locked,” Lexa affirms. She double-checked. “You awake yet?” she asks Clarke.

“Very, Mrs. Griffin-Woods,” Clarke says, and Lexa holds back a moan as Clarke pulls the covers over their heads.

 

 

"How many was that?" Lexa asks her later, a cocky smile on her face. "Four? It was four."

"Shut up, Lex," Clarke says, towel drying her hair as she walks out of the bathroom. Lexa just stares at her, knowing her smile can't be helped. It's early still, very early, not a sound coming from the kid's rooms.

"We should go wake them for a change," Clarke suggests, and Lexa nods.

They sneak into the room, the first rays of sun brightening up the space. Milla lays on her side, her lips open in a pout. Jake clutches his pillow, the sheet -as usual- pooling at his feet. Aden is dead to the world too, his arm thrown over his face. She and Clarke look at each other for a second, before nodding and charging in.

Jake squeals when Clarke begins tickling, confusion giving way to a fit of giggles.  
  
"What the hell?!" Aden exclaims, inevitably laughing as Lexa tickles him. She's going to give him this one and let go the small curse.

The ruckus wakes up Milla, and her big eyes open wide, confused. Lexa braces for her to start crying but she stays very quiet, and sudenly giggles at her brothers.

All in all, it's not a bad start to their day.

Clarke made Lexa promise that she wouldn't buy Christmas presents for them, that the trip was going to be everyone's present this year. Lexa did not listen. She's also pretty sure that Clarke knows she packed presents for everyone, even if she hid them in their bag, because her wife always takes one last look at everything to make sure they're prepared. Clarke did not say anything.

And so Lexa chases her children to the living room, and gives her wife a gentle slap on the butt to encourage her to join them.

She gives a still sleepy Jake a set of legos, the pieces smaller than anything they'd let him play with before because he's older, and they trust him not to put them in his mouth. 

Milla gets a stuffed bunny, this white, scented, incredibly soft thing that reminded Lexa of her daughter the second she saw it coming home from work one day two weeks ago. It smells like watermelon and strawberries, and their little girl smushes her face against the fabric, enchanted.

Lexa hands Aden -who has stopped frowning at everything, or maybe forgotten he was supposed to be mad- a new game for his PSP. Lexa debated for a second whether to get him anything at all, because  of the way he'd been acting with both herself and his mom, but ultimately she decided she wouldn't be that sort of parent.

She wouldn't punish her son with something like Christmas, and she knows Clarke agrees.

Now, they both smile as Aden rips into the wrapping paper, finds the new game for his PSP, and then hugs them both. Clarke looks surprised at first, but quickly sinks into the hug. Lexa can't believe it's been so long since she last saw her wife and son hug that the sight is odd, and she vows never to let another disagreement in their home go down like this one.

"Thanks Ma," Aden says. "And thank you, too," he says, looking at Clarke.

Lexa interrupts before Clarke can say she had nothing to do with it.

"You're welcome."

Lexa reaches beneath her seat, and Clarke's eyes wide.

So there was one present she didn't know about.

"Lexa, I told you..." Clarke says, but her voice holds no reproach. Lexa tries not to smile, smug as she is.

"And this is for the most beautiful woman on the planet, who I'm lucky enough to call my wife." She opens the little box and pulls out a thin gold bracelet, and Clarke gasps.

"Lexa!" 

Lexa shrugs, letting the piece of jewelry hang from her hand. 

"I know we said no presents...but I couldn't help it."

Clarke gives her a watery smile. 

"It's beautiful," She says, handing Lexa her left . A blue stone and a green stone hang side by side, and next to those three white crystals shine in the morning light. 

Their family, represented on a bracelet.

 

 

They spend most of the daylight hours at the pool and the restaurant, calming down tantrums, cleaning runny noses from the water, and convincing a three year old that fruit is the same everywhere. Neither of them can picture anything better.

 

-*-

 

Clarke looks around the ballrom, decorated in warm tropical colors, a far cry from the freezing cold back home this time of year. Even though it's night time and windy, the air is still warm.  Clarke is so glad they went through with this vacation.

She feels warm hands on her waist, and the surprising pressure makes her jump.

“You have to be the most beautiful woman here.” Warm breath hits the back of her neck, and Clarke doesn’t yet turn around. “I’d like very much to kiss you right now, may I?”

Clarke rolls her eyes.

“Lex, we’ve been together for over ten years.”

“May I?” Lexa asks again, walking in front of her and handing Clarke the champagne she’d gone to get.

“Lexa, we have three kids,” Clarke says. “We’ve had sex literally hundreds of times.”

“But may I?”

Clarke rolls her eyes, pulling her wife closer by her waist.

“Yes, you may kiss me, you huge dork.”

Lexa does just that, pressing her lips softly against Clarke’s, and Clarke sighs into it, aware that this is their last drink and their last dance for today because they promised their babies a trip to the beach early next morning, and they left their 13 year old son babysitting for the night. Aware that Lexa still tastes like dessert, all warmth and apples and sugar.

“I love you,” Clarke tells her, for all of the above.

 

 

They leave for the beach bright and early, holding a grand total of two bags, which for three kids, is an accomplishment Clarke is willing to celebrate. She sits by the side of the pool now, Aden next to her immersed on his new game. After a while the endless little noises have somehow become soothing, like a reminder that her eldest son is around and safe enough to kill virtual zombies on his handheld game.

"Psst. Pass me the sunblock," Clarke says in Aden's direction. 

"What, so you won't fry?" he asks, teasing.  Clarke misses joking around with Aden like this. Just not at her expense.

"Hey," Clarke complains, "Don't be mean to me just because I don't tan like you or your mom."

Aden shakes his head, smiling, and passes her the sunblock. Aden is right, because she does burn, but she's not about to condone such behavior.

She's putting on sunblock when it happens.

First, Aden passes her the bottle, and then goes over to Jake, who has grown tired of the kiddie pool and his baby sister.

She's putting on sunblock, and Lexa is holding Milla in the pool, and Aden is playing with Jake.

She's putting on sunblock, and it seems so stupid, so inconsequential.

She's rubbing the sunblock into her skin, and looking at Aden and Jake play, and looking at her wife holding their youngest in the pool, and suddenly there's a rumbling on the floor. 

It seems to be on the floor, running through everything.

 And then there's what sounds like screams in the distance, warnings coming from the beach but that she can’t make out with the sudden sound of birds flying in the opposite direction. 

It's all so fast after that.  The palm trees falling under the force off...

"Lexa, the kids!" she screams, terrified. "Aden, run!"

It’s all in flashes after that.

Lexa, holding their daughter in one arm and their son’s hand with the other. Lexa, trying to run across the pool but the water slowing her down.  Aden, jumping in the pool when the monstrous brown waves raze over the buildings and the people.

Those are the last things Clarke  sees before it all goes dark.


	3. Chapter 3

Everything is cold.

She can’t breathe and everything is cold. It’s all that registers. 

And then Clarke breaks the surface of the water.

Her legs keep kicking and her arms keep reaching out for anything that might keep her afloat, as her body desperately works to keep her head above the water. She splutters as she tries to suck in oxygen. It’s pure, raw instinct. Clarke can’t even think, in that moment. The water rushes through the buildings, dragging her with it, and she sees floating cars and other people and power lines -

“Mom!”

It breaks through the shock,  through the layers of gauze her brain seems to have wrapped itself in. Clarke suddenly hears everything, and she turns toward that voice.

“Aden!” she screams, looking around, trying to keep her head above the water. It’s cold, so cold. How are the little ones going to stand it?

Her babies. Lexa.

Clarke looks around desperately, but she can’t see them, any of them. She looks for a familiar head of brown hair above the water but all she can see is trash and debris. 

“Aden?!” she screams again, because she did hear him, she’s not imagining it.

“Here! Mom!”

The cry for help cuts her to her bones, and she furiously swims toward the son she can’t see yet. She kicks her legs, registering pain for the first time, but pushes through it because her son needs her.

She finally catches sight of blond hair, skinny arms reaching toward her.

“Aden!”

Clarke doesn’t see it coming.

It’s a plank of metal of some sort, gaining speed as the water pulls it, and Clarke doesn’t even register it’s heading towards her. 

“Mom, watch out!” Aden screams, but by the time Clarke looks -it’s too late.

The temperature of the water is not enough to numb the pain as her already battered body is dragged forward and under, her shirt and chest trapped by the jagged edges of the metal. She can’t hear anything over the sound of the water rushing above her ears, but she knows Aden is still calling for her, still screaming for help, so she grabs the metal by it’s side and pushes, cringing at the sudden sting. She pushes once more, and sinks below, letting the piece of wreckage rush above her. 

She kicks her legs until she reaches the surface.

“Aden?!”

“Mom, I’m here!”

Aden sees him, her smart boy, clinging to the side of a building, and she tries to swim toward him, but the current is too strong. It just keeps dragging her away.

She whips her head around, trying to find something, and then her vision zeroes in on a tree.

“Aden!” She yells. Her throat feels raw. He’s becoming so small she can barely see him. “Swim to me!” She waves her hand, calling for him, and only turns around long enough to grab a branch.

And then she sees him moving, fast, toward her.

“Aden!” Clarke finally squeezes him in her arms.

“Mom,” he cries, holding her tighter, and even though it hurts -everything hurts- Clarke doesn’t complain. Her son is safe with her. It’s all that matters.

Clarke looks around above his head. She feels too vulnerable out in the open like this, but there’s nothing she can see nearby. And then she looks up. They must be close to the top already, but if it withstood the first wave then Clarke thinks it must be at least strong enough to support them and keep them away from any other debris.

“Aden, you gotta climb, okay? As high as you can.”

“I’m not leaving you down here-”

“I’ll follow you. Now, go!”

She feels marginally safer once her torso is out of the water. She sits on a branch that groans under her body weight, and her legs are mostly still in the water but she doesn’t think she can climb any more.

“Mom?” Aden asks from above her, and Clarke doesn’t know when she got so dizzy. “Mom!” Aden climbs back down until he’s next to her, touching her chin. “Mom, you’re hurt!”

Clarke shakes her head to clear it of its sudden fog, and looks down at herself. She’s not quite sure she understand what she sees, but all she knows is she can have her son looking at it, so she takes what’s left of her shirt and ties it close over her broken skin.

“Mom, your leg, too.” There are tears on his voice, and it wakes Clarke up from her brief stupor. She looks down at the water, noticing how her leg is creating a dark red stain in it that rushes away with the still flowing tide.

Aden rips a strip from his shirt.

“Here,” he says, offering her the piece of fabric. She taught him well.

She ties it just below her knee, hoping to stem the bleeding. She sits back against the tree, resting from the exertion. She holds Aden close, and he hides his face on her neck.

All there’s left to do is wait, but she’s not sure for what.

 

 

“Mom.” Aden has been so quiet Clarke almost thought he was asleep, but his voice, quiet and forlorn, reaches her ears above the sound of the water. “Mom, I’m sorry.”

She can’t even ask him for what before he tells her.

“This is my fault.”

Clarke pulls away, surprised.

“What?” Her brain has been numbed for the past minutes, half-hour, Clarke is not sure how long. But there’s been nothing but a buzz, nothing but instinct, because she can afford to think past that right now. She can’t afford to make sense of this and wonder about - she just can’t. 

But Aden makes her.

“This was nature,” Clarke tells him. “You can’t - it’s no one’s fault.”

“I was mad,” Aden says. “I thought you’d both forgotten about me and I was mad. I'm sorry.” 

Clarke simply kisses his head.

"Mom?"

"I’m here," she promises him.

"Don’t leave me," he begs. "Please don’t leave me. "

"I’m not going anywhere."

"Promise me," he insists, and looking around them, to the water and the destruction and the bodies, Clarke can understand why he needs the reassurance. And she has no intention of leaving her son alone.

"I promise." 

 

 

 

“Mom, the water is going down.”

Clarke looks down, and finds herself father away from the water than she was. Much farther away. She knows they need to get down now, see if it’s shallow enough to walk in and find some help.

But she’s dizzy.

She’s losing to much blood.

And she doesn’t want to find help, what she needs to find are Lexa and the little ones. She’s so dizzy, and the thought only makes it worse. They were -in the pool. Clarke saw them get hit by the wave. She’s starting to remember now.

She can’t think. Her wife. Her children. She can’t make sense of it.

 

 

_“Hey, buddy. Are you lost?” Clarke kneels down to the height of the little boy, his lip wobbling as he stands in the middle of the supermarket. “What’s your name?” she asks._

_“Lex- mom,” he stammers. “Mom says I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”_

_“And that’s very good advice,” Clarke tells him. “But I think she’d be okay with me helping you find her. I’m Clarke,” she offers, and then points to her scrubs. It turns out to be a good thing she didn’t change after work. “I’m a doctor.”_

_“I know,” the little boy, says._

_Clarke gasps._

_“Really?” she asks, widening her eyes. “How did you know?”_

_He smiles a little._

_“What’s your name?” Clarke asks again._

_“…Aden.”_

_“Well, Aden, why don’t we go find your mom?”_

_It takes less than two minutes after his name is said through the speaker for a young woman with frazzled hair and large, scared eyes, power-walks to where they’re standing._

_“Aden! Don’t ever run off like that again!” she says, and the lip-wobbles from Aden almost become a full on cry._

_“Hey, it’s okay, he’s okay,” Clarke says. “He was scared.”_

_“I’m…sorry,” the woman says. She picks the boy up with surprising strength, sitting him on her hip. “Are you okay? Okay.” And then she’s looking at Clarke  with a pair of piercing eyes._

_“Thank you so much,” she says earnestly._

_“It’s okay, he’s a sweet kid,” Clarke says, and then, on account of those eyes, throws in a compliment -and a question. “Your husband and you are very lucky.”_

_“…just Lexa and me,” Aden pipes up, pulling away from the woman slightly. Clarke smiles._

_“Lexa,” Clarke says._

_“Yes,” the woman says, looking down at the boy with what Clarke thinks is slight exasperation. “Lexa Woods,” the woman says, changing Aden’s weight to one arm so she can shake Clarke’s hand._

_“I’m Clarke,” she says, taking her hand._

 

 

Clarke throws up before she makes it to the ground.

The movement is too much for her body to handle, and she grips a branch -focus on the rough bark beneath her skin- while she empties her stomach.

Aden looks away.

Finally touching the ground brings everything into sharp focus for Clarke.

A tsunami. 

The sea coming into land and wreaking havoc. The floating cars, the broken buildings. The bodies.

The strength of the waves. Clarke feels sick even thinking about it. She can hardly think about it, or anything. Everything blurs around her, even breathing feels hard. She feels swollen with all the dirty water she swallowed and didn’t manage to throw up, and every cut and rip to her skin begins to make itself known as she follows Aden through the dirty water.

It’s nothing compared to how she aches when she thinks about the people missing.

When she thinks of Lexa, of Jake and Milla, of the water burying…she just wants to give up. To fall to her knees and let the water cover her. But she can’t, she has to fight -for Aden.

She has hope that they’re all right. But if they’re not…

The she’s all Aden has left. And he’s all she has now. She’ll need to recover somehow. 

She lets her mind blank as she struggles to put one foot in front of the other.


	4. Chapter 4

Lexa walks between the wreckage, stepping over metal and fallen trees and…things she doesn’t want to think about, can’t look at too hard.

Every single bone in her body aches.

Aden didn’t want to come. She killed him.

And Clarke…

Lexa doesn’t know how she could do this without Clarke. Life. Everything. Even taking one more step feels impossible, but she forces herself to do it.

“Milla!” 

There’s no answer. Like the last hundred times she’s screamed any one of their names. It was her idea to come. Or was it Clarke’s? Lexa can’t remember. Anything from before the tsunami hit feels like a distant dream, as the present is a foggy, never ending nightmare.

“Clarke! Aden!” She tries again. Someone looks up at her right, but it’s just an old man, sitting still, dumbfounded. In another life, Lexa would have stopped to help. But he looks fine -physically- and her family might not be, so she keeps walking. 

She goes from thinking them all dead to believing they’re alive and waiting for her from one second to another. It gives her whiplash.

“Milla!”

She is so small. 

Lexa wants to throw up.

She was so small when she was born. Lexa screamed and cried and pushed, and then this strange little creature just slid out from between her legs. Clarke’s face when she caught her is one of the best memories she has. It was worth it. The pain and the exhaustion. All the months she spent second-guessing herself. 

Lexa’s foot collides with a piece of fabric, and after a day full of walking and oozing open cuts, it’s the smallest thing which brings her down.

She barely feels the sting on her knees when she lands.

Because it’s not a piece of fabric, it’s a torn, sodden stuffed animal, which once was a pristine white bunny.

“Clarke,” she gasps out, her fingers digging in the mud, her chest breaking open. “Clarke, I lost our baby.”

 

 

 

_“…my nipples hurt.”_

_“Want me to kiss them better?”_

_“No offense, Clarke, but a mouth on my boobs is the last thing I want.”_

_Clarke kisses her shoulder instead._

_“I love you, I love you, I love you.” Clarke drops a kiss to her lips. “I’ll give her a bottle,” she says._

_“No, bring her, it’s okay-”_

_“Lexa, you’re hurting. She can have a bottle every once in a while, okay?”_

_Lexa looks to the floor, to the crib in the corner of the room._

_“You never gave Jake bottles.”_

_“Lexa, look at me.” Suddenly there’s a finger on her chin, and Lexa looks up into her wife’s eyes. “You’re an amazing mom,” Clarke tells her, and Lexa still shivers. She’s a mom. They have three beautiful children together. Almost doesn’t seem real. “And that’s true always, doesn't matter how you feed her. Okay?”_

_Lexa reluctantly nods._

_Clarke makes the bottle, and then settles the baby on Lexa’s lap. She settles herself behind Lexa. They both help hold the bottle while Milla greedily drinks the formula._

_Lexa would have withstood the pain -she only wants to do what was best for her daughter, to make Clarke proud of her. But Clarke already thinks she’s perfect._

 

 

 

She stands up slowly, groggily, and clutches the toy in her hand.

On second thought, she doesn’t know if it’s Milla’s. It looks like hers -but was hers so long? And then she lets it fall to the floor, realizing they didn’t take Milla’s toy to the pool that morning, that it’s just fatigue and pain making her seen thing were there are none.

If Clarke was here she would know what to do.

But she isn’t, and Lexa takes another step.

The hotel comes into view some time later. 

She doesn't know how far she walked, but she keeps in mind the direction so she can try again tomorrow, in a different way.

The hotel is small, but it remained standing when so many other buildings, with its lavish designs and feats of architecture, crumbled beneath the waves. It’s exactly the kind of hotel she avoided when picking out where they all would stay. 

She wanted the best for her family. What a fucking joke that was.

Maybe if she’d picked this they’d all still be-

She walks in, climbs the stairs to the last floor. The door is ajar, as she left it.

The man inside looks up when enters.

“Can you tell him I’m here, please?” she asks. She can’t climb very well with all her wounds. The man nods. 

A second later he disappears through the window and up the fire escape, and Lexa hears him yell. 

“Kid, your mom is back!”

And then she sees the only thing keeping her going. 

“Mama!”

Jake jumps inside, his knees cushioned by the soggy mattress beneath the window, and then he’s inside her arms. Lexa breathes for the first time since she woke up that morning.

 And then Jake looks up at her with bright blue eyes, the same blue eyes she’s known for years before her son was ever born, and she loses her breath all over again. It’s punched out of her by grief.

“Did you find mommy?” Jake asks, hanging onto her every word.

“No, baby,” she tells him, and tries to be strong, to not let her face fall. “Not yet.”

She thinks about Clarke’s smile and her kisses and the way Milla clutched her in her sleep and how Aden laughed when he beat her at basketball and she can’t breathe anymore. 

She slides down the wall, closing her eyes when it feels like the walls are going to cave in.

“Are you okay, mama?” Jake asks, and Lexa looks up only to find worried eyes trained on her.

“I’m okay,” she says, and Jake plops down beside her.

He plays with her tattoos.

His tiny fingers trace the designs on her arm, up and down and around, and it calms Lexa, makes her remember that not all is lost. 

She’s not alone. 

And she can’t break. She still has a son to take care of, right in front of her. 

She pulls him into her lap, and Jake lets himself be pulled. 

He covers her cheeks with two small hands. 

“Are we gonna be okay?” he asks, the lightness of innocence all over the words.

And Lexa doesn’t have it in her to lie.

So she doesn’t answer him.

Their wellbeing always depended on each other’s. Lexa knows there’s no a world she can be okay without her wife and children, or where Jake can be okay without his siblings or his other mother. If they’re…if they’re gone, they will never be okay again.

“I love you, Jake,” Lexa says instead. She brushes dirty hair back from his forehead. “You look so much like your mommy, did you know that?” She smiles faintly. “You have her eyes.”

Jake smiles, but after touching a finger to the corner of her lips, he frowns. 

“Mama? I’m scared.”

“I know.” Me too, she doesn’t say, can’t say. She’s terrified, she’s dying inside. But her strength is needed right now.

“Where’s mommy?” Jake asks.

“I don’t know. For now, it’s just you and me buddy.”

Jake grabs her hand, picks mud off of it.

“I want mommy,” he says.

“I know," Lexa tells him, and then brushes a kiss over his forehead, tasting blood and dirt on her son's forehead. Something that should have never been there. Proof of the nightmare that happened. "Me too.”

 

It’s dark.

It’s dark and heavy. Slow. 

The hit hurts. Air is torn from her lungs. Her entire body goes tight, braces for impact. 

An unstoppable force versus an unmovable object. 

Clarke had told her that conundrum on one of their first dates. Lexa had thought about it for longer that she might have admitted to, fascinated by the thought of two strong forces meeting.

The water was unstoppable. 

And she was everything but unmovable, a fragile, delicate human being. They’ve never stood a chance against nature. 

The water hits. Her body goes tight. And Jake’s hand was firmly inside hers, she only squeezes him tighter. But she’d barely managed to grab Milla’s, so when it happens…when it happens, the current pulls her.

It’s dark. 

It’s dark and heavy. Slow.Lexa can’t see anything in front of her, and she swims, tries to follow after her, find her among the water, but it’s too fast, the current is too strong, and she has to resurface, because Jake needs to breathe.

Her heart stops when she sees the world around her.

It’s changed, a different planet than before. It’s all angry brown water rushing like a river, dragging them with it. She looks around her, screams for her baby, but she’s gone. 

And then Jake is crying and she has to focus on him.

The water drags them until she finds the ledge of a building to hold onto and doesn’t let go. Lexa looks for Milla.

The water is too fast, and it’s hard to imagine what the strength of it, what the debris and the planks of zinc she can see floating might do to her little body.

She’s too young too be a good swimmer in strong water. Lexa had only taught her to hold her breath and kick her legs.

She can’t hold her breath forever. 

She’s torn between leaving Jake holding onto something and going to search for Milla, looking around for anyone she might entrust with a terrified little boy to catch up to his sister-

 

“Mama!”

Lexa’s eyes pop open. She doesn’t remember falling asleep.

“You were crying,” Jake says softly, his pointer finger on her cheek. He holds up a shining digit as if in proof. “Does it hurt?” he asks.

Lexa looks down at herself, knowing what really is killing her can’t be seen. 

She still takes stock. 

Her lower leg pounds, her biggest wound, and through the cut she can see the white of fat beneath her skin and the angry red-

She resolves to find a piece of cloth so that Jake won’t see it. Or longer pants. The water reached almost all of the rooms, but maybe there's something that she could borrow.

“No,” she lies. “It looks worse than it is.”

“And that?”

Jake points to a large black bruise on her other leg, the stain spreading over her thigh.

“No, baby.”

Lexa grits her teeth when Jake pushes a finger in the middle of the bruise.

“See?” she says, not without effort. “I’m fine.”

Seemingly satisfied, he lays his head back down on her lap. 

“Close your eyes, okay?” She asks him.

“I’m cold.”

Lexa takes her shirt off, and drapes it over him. It's clashing, when she looks down at herself. Makes her head spin. Clarke picked the blue bikini she wears underneath. 

And Lexa can’t make sense of how a vacation became this.

"Mama?" Jake asks again, turning around and looking up at her.

"I said it's time to sleep," she shushes him.

"Promise me you’ll find mommy,” Jake asks softly, and Lexa can't quiet the response it has on her. She might have lost her wife but Jake...he's only five. God, how can she doe this? How does she do this?

“I will do everything I can,” she tells him vehemently. “I’ll never stop searching.” Lexa realizes how true that is in that moment. Even if there’s no hope, even if years go by…she’ll never stop looking for her family.  She simply can't. She won't accept that the water swallowed them.

“Promise me,” Jake demands. “Mama, promise me mommy is okay. And Aden and Milla.” Tears flood his eyes, and it kills Lexa hat her five year old son has to fight to keep tears at bay.

“Mama!” Jake yells, understanding her silence as something being terminally wrong, it’s as if Lexa’s lack of reassurance has finally cemented it for him that they’re in trouble, and it’s larger than life. He gets up, climbs in her lap so they're eye level and Lexa's throat burns.

 Lexa has waved off Jake’s concerns about her blood filled eyes, told him the scratches and weeping cuts didn’t hurt her at all, that she couldn't even feel her black eye.  She’s kissed his scrapes better and promised him he would be okay. 

But she can’t do anything now.

She promised him the plane would stay in the air and it did. But she can't promise him this, she can't.

She lets go, and Jake lets go, and it’s okay, because he’s been such a good boy. And she’s tried so hard to be strong. 

She sobs into Jake’s chest quietly, and her son clutches her head close while he, too, cries. Jake has never seen her like this. Not even when Gustus died and she was a wreck for days.

She’s never let her children see her breaking down.

She can’t help it now.

“Mama-” Jake sobs, his entire body shaking. “Mama, please promise me,” he begs, like Lexa promising Clarke and his siblings are okay will make it true, like he believes that, and it breaks Lexa’s heart, it breaks her.

Because she can’t. She can’t promise him that.

She’s not sure she believes it herself.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s destruction, like she’s never had the misfortune of seeing before.

Even when she still practiced medicine, a bad car accident was as close as she got to seeing how truly fragile human bodies are, how easily they’re torn and ripped and made to bleed.

She sees it clearly now.

She hates that Aden is seeing it, too.

They walk slowly, Clarke leaning heavily on Aden with every consecutive step, until they see other people.

Bodies, at first. 

(A boy’s body -dark haired, not like Jake- makes bile rise in her throat. She begins to lose the small bit of hope she still held that she’ll see them again faced with the magnitude of what happened.)

“There’s a guy there, mom.”

Clarke looks to the distance, though she’s so dizzy she can hardly see straight. An old man, a local, walks between the mud and water with the help of a stick.

“Here! Help!” Aden screams, calling for the man’s attention.

“He probably needs help, too, Aden,” she reminds him, but Aden runs from her. Clarke stumbles, and manages to hold herself up with the help of an overturned car nearby. She sees Aden speaking to the man in the distance, and pointing towards her.

And suddenly she’s staring at the bright, bright blue sky after a storm.

“Mom!”

 

 

_It hurt in a way Clarke hadn’t expected._

_She’d read all the books, and she and Lexa had attended all the birthing classes the doctor had recommended (and some she hadn’t, too) but she still wasn’t prepared when the first contraction hit._

_She knew what was happening right away, and she tried -she really, really tried- to let Lexa sleep a little longer. Not so much because she wanted her wife to get more rest but because she wanted to seem bad-ass, she wanted a good story to tell._

_'Yeah, I realized I was going into labor and I just left Lexa sleep some more. I went back to sleep for a bit myself. It was so natural, so easy.'_

_It was natural, she made sure of it, she wanted it that way, but it certainly wasn’t easy._

_She woke Lexa up after five minutes._

_They called the birthing center they’d picked and they recommended she stay home until the contractions were closer together. Clarke never did well with waiting._

_And she did wait._

_She hurt._

_She tried to breathe and stay present, but the pain was like pure fire, licking her from the inside out. And then finally she called again and they told her to come and the drive over was the longest fifteen minutes of Clarke’s life._

_And all the while Lexa kept talking to her. 'You're doing so well, baby. We're almost there. Breathe.' Clarke tried so hard to listen._

_A few hours and an infinity of pain later she held their baby boy in her hands, her forehead drenched in sweat and her mouth parched and her thighs and back and center on fire, but it was worth it. Jake didn't cry, just looked up at them; Lexa smiled._

_And Clarke knew all the pain had been worth it._

 

 

“Mom! Don’t fall asleep.”

Clarke startles awake.

For a second, she almost thinks she’s back there. She doesn’t know why her mind conjures up the images, but she could almost feel the newborn baby in her arms, and the pain…

The pain was real.

Clarke opens her eyes.

“Mom!” Aden cries, and she tries to sit up but finds she can’t. “Mom, you just  -you just fell! Don’t scare me like that!”

“I’m…I’m sorry.”

She’s moving.

She’s laying on something, and she’s being moved. And it feels like fire coursing through her every limb, licks of pain tearing her open. 

She can almost hear Lexa’s voice in her ear, telling her their almost there. But this isn’t that joyful, terrifying day she gave birth. And she won’t ever see Lexa again.

Clarke closes her eyes.

“Mom!”

Aden grabs her cheek, and he looks so earnest and desperate Clarke fights against her every instinct and forces herself to stay awake.

“Mom, he has a truck, I think he’s taking us to a hospital.”

Clarke nods.

She grabs Aden’s hand, and pushes the pain away, and fights to stay present. 

They load her on the back of a pickup truck. The roads are bad. Clarke only knows it because every bump feels like nails sinking on her already broken flesh. She stares at Aden from her place lying down on the floor of the trunk. His blond hair is almost brown with dirt and mud, at his arms are littered with tiny cuts and scratches, though none look to deep.

And his eyes…

His eyes look out beyond what Clarke can see in her position, and they’re haunted.

Clarke grabs his shirt.

“Don’t.”

“Mom?”

“D-” she coughs. 

“Don’t talk,” Aden begs.

“Don’t look… at it,” she says. She doesn’t want him to see those horrors. After she attended her first car accident as an intern, Clarke had nightmares for weeks. She can’t imagine her son staring all that destruction she can hardly make sense of in the face.

But his next words make Clarke realize there’s no avoiding it.

“There’s nothing else to look at,” he says. “Everything’s gone.”

Clarke feels in her bones how true that is.

 

 

Aden shakes her shoulder, and Clarke opens her eyes.

She doesn’t realize when she fell asleep, and it terrifies her. She’s slipping.

They lower her from the truck onto a gurney, and then roll her inside the hospital. Her back, stiff from the wood and the bottom of the trunk, screams in relief at the thin mattress of the gurney. She can smell the disinfectant in the air, universal in hospitals regardless of where they’re located.

They stop. 

She looks around, makes an effort to focus on the details. It’s a small room. Too small. It’s a closet, full of cleaning appliances and medical supplies. Clarke takes a moment to breathe. 

“Mom?” 

“I’m okay,” she says, though she’s just beginning to notice the way her lungs, her entire chest, burn.

“They’ll fix you,” Aden says, and Clarke nods. She reaches for Aden’s hand, and he grabs hers with both of his. Clarke looks up at him. She’s lucky. She’s so, so lucky. She has him still.

A violent shiver runs through her body.

“I’m cold, Aden,” she tells him, looking around as much as she can to locate a blanket for him. She’s a grown woman, she can take it. But not her son. “You must be freezing, it’s so cold in here…”

“It’s not cold, mom,” Aden says, and he looks almost panicked. “It’s hot.”

“Oh.”

Clarke knows what it means. 

She’s lost too much blood.

She brings her attention on her own body for a moment, feeling every ache and pain and cut, and focuses on her heartbeat. It’s fast. Too fast. Tachycardia.

She can’t evaluate the state of her wounds from where she’s lying and she doesn’t dare sit up, but if she loses enough blood…hypovolaemic shock. Death. 

It’s real.

Clarke’s scared of dying.

She’s never been in such despair, knowing that Lexa…Lexa is dead and her babies are gone too. And yet she’s afraid of dying, terrified most of all of leaving Aden alone. 

She has to fight, she has to live, for him. 

Her son is all she has left in this world.

She still remembers meeting him, short for a five year old but so serious he could have been in his twenties. How guarded he was at first, how she promised him her intentions with his mom were good. He’s so big now, just an inch or two shorter than her. He’s so big but he’s still a child. 

She can’t do this to him. She has to live. 

She has to live even if the very thought of going the rest of her life without Lexa and Jake and Milla makes her wish for death.  

_Aden._

“Mom, don’t cry. They’re going to fix you.”

“Okay,” she says. She's not crying for herself, and she finds she can hardly stop. Her wife. Her babies. She lets a single sob out to relieve the pressure in her chest.

Aden gasps.

He looks terrified, and on the verge of tears, and Clarke knows she can't do this right now. So she takes a breath, and reigns herself in for her son. “Okay.”

 

 

 

The door opens a few minutes or hours later.

A doctor walks inside, followed closely by a nurse who takes her pressure while the man prods at her chest, tearing a scream from Clarke’s chest.

The doctor says something to the nurse in a language Clarke can’t understand. 

But she hopes he’ll understand this.

“You have to save me,” she says.

The man looks down at her with compassion in his dark eyes.

Clarke holds on to his arm, her dirtied fingers a stark contrast against the white of his coat.

“You have to save me,” she tells him, begs him. “I’m all he has left.”

Her chest wants to burst open once she says it out loud. 

“I lost my wife. I lost two children. You have to fix me. I’ve lost..I’ve lost too much blood. And..And infection…”

“Mom,” Aden cries, his hand on her shoulder. 

Clarke touches him with her fingertips, before looking back at the doctor, whose face remains impassive.

“You…you have to save me.”

She closes her eyes and slips away to the mercy of unconsciousness.


	6. Chapter 6

The rumbling of the floor wakes her up. 

She clutches Jake tighter to her chest. She fears it’s happening all over again, and it makes her heart race even though they’re up high. 

 “Mama, what’s wrong?”

 She shushes Jake, and stands up with difficulty. 

 But the ground stops rumbling.

 “Cars are here!” A man yells out behind her. Lexa peeks outside the door into the hallway. 

 “What’s going on?” she asks, to anyone who might hear.

 “They’ve sent cars to take people to the hospitals,” an old woman tells her, and Lexa nods her thanks. 

 She walks inside the room and puts Jake down, sitting him up against a wall.

 “Mama, are we going to the hospital?” he asks, more awake now.

 Lexa doesn’t know. 

 Jake has a couple of bruises and scratches, and he’s scared, but she’s been keeping him warm. She doesn’t care about herself.

 On the one hand, a hospital means phoning home, reaching Abby and Lincoln and their friends, letting everyone know she and Jake are alright. It means food for Jake. Safe drinking water. Medical care for his scratches.

 It was always Clarke who made the kids sit down and get cleaned up with peroxide water before putting on band-aids and kissing boo-boos better. She knows Clarke would want her to go.

 But she can’t bring herself to. 

 She can’t just go farther and farther away from the last time she saw Clarke.

 “Mama?”

 “One second, Jake,” she pleads. Maybe she doesn’t have to go. She can just ask to see if anyone will lend her a cell phone. She knows the power lines are down on this side of town, but there has to be someone with a satellite phone, right? Whoever sent the cars. Government? Military? 

 Decided, she grabs the dirty sheet that’s covering the broken window. 

 “Here,” she tells Jake, covering his shoulders. “It could be chilly outside.”

 He scrunches up his face.

 “It’s kinda wet.”

 “I’m sorry, baby,” she says, brushing his hair away from his forehead. “We’re going to go downstairs for a little while, okay? Do you want me to carry you?”

 Jake shakes his head.

 “Are we gonna go look for mommy? And Aden and Milla?”

 Lexa doesn’t answer that.

 “We’re gonna go see if they have something to eat, okay?” she tells him. “And something for those cuts.”

 Jake stops walking. Lexa almost trips.

 “No alcohol,” Jake tells her seriously, and it steals a smile from Lexa’s face. Even in the middle of this situation her little boy is still a little boy, afraid of the sting of alcohol on a cut. 

 “I promise,” she tells him, and together they walk down the stairs.

 

 

 

The world outside seems different than it did just a day ago. 

 The water has receded, leaving puddles and debris everywhere, but it’s no longer up to her ankles. She makes sure the ground is safe enough for Jake to walk on, and it looks like someone has been moving the larger pieces of twisted metal and fallen trees out of the way. Most of the street is visible.

 Hurt people are carried to the trunk of trucks in makeshift gurneys, made up of door’s or large metal slabs.

 She sees sheets covering what she assumes to be bodies.

 She’s swallows and tugs Jake closer to her.

 “Jake, if you see someone speaking on the phone tell me, okay?”

 He looks up at her and nods, taking his mission seriously. Lexa looks around as well. 

But what she sees makes her breath stop and tears spring to her eyes. 

She’s a mother. She can’t avoid crying. 

Next to one of the buildings, a woman watches over three little bodies lying over a sheet on the sidewalk. Dirty, mud covered. 

She stumbles when she sees a purple bathing suit. 

She’d recognize it anywhere. 

Lexa can’t breathe. 

“Mama?” Jake tugs her hand, but she can barely feel it. “Mama?!” 

“That’s my baby,” she chokes out. Her legs carry her forward, her whole universe zoning in the little girl lying on the floor. “Oh God, that’s my baby.” 

She falls on already raw needs to the ground, and grabs her, hoists her onto her lap. Lexa can’t think straight. She just holds her tighter against her chest, cradling her head, curling over her. How could she lose her? What would Clarke say? Her entire world crashes to the ground. It’s like her heart has been ripped out of her chest. Jakes pulls on her shoulder, and he, too, is crying. Lexa can’t stop. Her baby. 

 “Are you her mother? They’re just taking a nap, it was too warm in the room we were in-”

 “Mama?” a small, sweet voice asks, and Lexa pulls Milla away from her body. Green eyes looking up at Lexa, blinking owlishly with sleep.

 She gasps.

 “Milla?” 

“Mama,” Milla says, curling back into her lap. “Sleepy. Nana nap.”

 Lexa’s lungs expand again.

 Jake kneels next to them, and throws his arms around his little sister. And all Lexa can do is breathe, breathe, breathe, and hold her children in her arms. Her babies, one who she’d started to believe was lost forever. 

 But she’s here.

 Her baby is right here, sleepy and tired in her arms.

 Lexa chuckles wetly at Milla’s attempt of ‘want a nap’, relief leaving her raw. She checks her over for wounds, but apart from dirt and little scratches she can’t see anything in her little body. She’s okay. 

She was lying there so quietly, so still.

 Not two minutes have gone by since she first saw her, but Lexa’s world has already crashed and burned and been rebuilt again. 

“How?” She asks, looking up at the woman who was watching over them. The two other little kids begin to wake up from the ruckus Lexa was making. 

“We found her beneath some palm leaves,” the woman tells her, and she, too, is crying. “Near the parking lot, just after it happened. We took her in. These are my sons.” 

Lexa nods.  

“She never stopped asking for you.” 

Lexa sobs into Milla’s hair. She can’t help it. 

“Mama?” Jake asks, and Lexa reigns it in for him. But hope flares up bright and strong inside her chest. Milla is okay. Her baby is fine. And so are Clarke and Aden, they have to be. 

They are. And she’ll find them. 

“Thank you,” she tells the woman, extending her arm to squeeze the other mother’s hand.  The woman nods, tears coursing down her face.

 “I- I can’t find my daughter,” the woman confesses. “I'm so glad you found yours.”

 Lexa nods, and squeezes her hand tighter. 

In that moment, they’re connected. Lexa doesn’t think there’s another person in the world who could understand her more. Except Clarke, when she finds her. A tiny hand pulling on her hair breaks the moment. She looks down to find Milla’s big green staring up at her, awake and alert intelligent. She’s never loved the sight more.

 “I have boo-boo,” Milla says, showing her hand to Lexa. There’s a red gash on it, and it must no doubt hurt her little girl.

 Lexa takes her hand and kisses her palm as gently as she can manage.

 She looks at the trucks in the distance, apparently heading towards hospitals. She knows she can’t leave, can’t go further away from where she last saw Clarke and Aden. Her wife and son could be caught beneath debris somewhere close, they could be hurt and needing help, waiting for her to find them. She can’t move.  

But she needs help.

 “We poured some alcohol on that,” the woman tells Lexa, pointing to Milla’s tiny, balled up fist. “There’s no medicine, if we had antibiotics-”

 “I understand,” Lexa tells her. “Thank you,” she says earnestly. “Do you have a phone by any chance?”

 The woman shakes her head. 

“Lines are down. I keep hearing there’s a refuge camp in the mountains, maybe there…”

 Lexa nods.

 She stands up, hoists Milla up in her arms. 

 “Thank you again,” she tells the woman, holding her girl tight in her arms, like she was still a baby. Like she’d just been born, a pink squealing thing that Clarke had caught before putting her on her chest. 

 Lexa feels like they’ve both been born again.

 “What’s your name?” she asks the woman, wanting to remember her, wanting to tell Clarke who saved their baby.

 “Luna,” she says with a smile, and kneels down next to her sons. 

 Lexa nods. She’s never been religious, but she sends a prayer to whoever is listening that Luna finds her daughter. And she goes back to the hotel with Milla in her arms.

 She can’t stop thinking about what to do.

 

 

 

Milla is asleep again by the time they make it back to the room Lexa’s been keeping Jake and herself holed up in. More and more people, other…survivors -is that what they are?- keep walking down the stairs and down the hallways.

 Everyone is leaving.

 They’re close to the coast, it only makes sense.

 And yet. 

The steps and the voices fill her with a sense of urgency. It’s reminiscent of the anxiety attacks she used to get in high-school, from the white knuckle grip she had on her grades. Now something much more precious than a damn GPA is on the line.

 She makes Jake sit on the couch, and deposits Milla next to him. He doesn’t complain when her head falls on his lap, he just wraps his arms around her. Milla had trouble falling asleep unless she was completely exhausted, and her little baby…Lexa has no idea what she went through.

  She’s a grown woman and she was terrified, and that was with Jake by her side. Her 3 year old was all alone.  

 “Mama?” Jake asks her.

 “Yes, baby?”

 “Are we leaving too? With everyone else?”

 “I don’t know.”

 There’s no food left in the hotel, besides a damn packet of cookies she’s been saving, and half a bottle of water. If they’re taking people to the hospital that means relief. 

She knows they need to leave. 

But still. Clarke.

 “Hey!”

 Lexa turns toward the door, her hand immediately flying out in front of Jake and Milla, as if she could protect them, as if people did this.

  Like she couldn’t stop the ocean.

 “I’ve heard they’re taking the children to a refuge in the mountains, just in case,” the man at the door tells her, nodding towards Jake and Milla. “They’re saying the hospitals are all at sea level.”

 Lexa nods.

 “Thank you,” she tells him.

 He leaves.

 She knows she has to keep looking for Clarke and Aden. Her wife and son could be trapped under debris somewhere, could be concussed and waiting for help, could be lying on a ditch-

 She can’t stop searching for them.  But isn’t it irresponsible to keep Jake and Milla with her when they could be safer somewhere else? Shouldn’t she take them to the mountains? Where there’s foot and water and hopefully safety?

 It tears her apart, but she knows then what she needs to do.

 She kneels in front of Jake, lays her hands over his thighs so he'll listen. She has never asked him for anything as vital.

 "You have to take care of your sister, okay?" He frowns, confused, and Lexa swallows her tears. She can't believe what she's about to do. "You and her are going to the mountains with everyone else, and I'll keep looking for mommy and Aden. And when I find them-"

 "Mama, no-"

 "When I find them, we'll meet you there, okay? So you have to take care of her." 

 Jake shakes his head, tears overflowing his eyes. 

"No. I can’t." 

"Please," Lexa begs. She knows she has no right to ask this of him, but she has no choice. "She’s little. She needs you." 

But Jake is little too. 

"Mama, don’t leave us," Jake begs, but Lexa pushes the tears and the panic down and looks away from him. 

“Milla. Milla, sweetie wake up.” She brushes her dirty hair away from her forehead softly, until her beautiful eyes open, confused. “I need you to hold your brother’s hand, okay? And don’t let go.”

 She takes her into her arms.

 “Jake, come on.”

 “No.”

 Lexa hikes up Milla higher on her side.

 “Jake, the trucks-” 

“No!” He shakes his head, and grasps the couch so hard his knuckles go white. “I don’t want to go!”

 His yells wake up Milla fully, and then she’s pulling away from Lexa, scared.

 Lexa shushes her. She pats her back like she was still that colicky baby she stayed awake with so many nights. She can't believe she just got her baby back and she's going to send her away again.

 Jake starts crying, and it makes Milla tear up, too.

 She needs Clarke. If Clarke were here...

 Lexa looks outside the window, trying to think through the shrill cries of her children. Who can she ask to watch them for her? She can't see any officers-

 Milla cries louder in her arms, her tiny fingers digging into her collarbone so hard it feels like needles. She’s terrified.

 Lexa stops.

 What is she doing? Milla is just a baby, she can’t...she can’t leave her in the care of strangers. She can’t make her 5 year old son responsible for looking after her. She can’t leave them alone. If Clarke were here…

 If Clarke were here she'd be disappointed Lexa ever thought about putting their baby in that situation. That she ever considered leaving them alone.

 She’s desperate to find Clarke and Aden, but she can’t do this to Jake and Milla.

 Lexa breathes, calms her daughter down. 

 She kneels down in front of Jake, cups his cheek so he looks at her. His face is tear stained.

 “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Jake. Change of plans, okay? You’re not going alone. I’m never leaving you alone, I promise.”

 “We’re not-" He hiccups. "We're not going anymore?”

 “No, we’re going. I’m going with you.”

 There's no more food, no water. She can't keep them here. So even though it kills her, she has to put them above Clarke and Aden. She can't keep searching for them here, not right now.

 "What about mommy and Aden?" Jake asks, his breathing calming down.

 Lexa doesn't have an answer.

 

 

 

Everything she has she can carry in her hands.

 Their hotel was so close to the beach it was almost completely covered, the are around it so flooded Lexa hadn’t been able to search it yet. She has a packet of cookies and half a bottle of water, and neither she nor her children have shoes. She found some clothes to put over her bathing suit after it first happened, but what can she give Milla?

 It’s human, she supposes. To worry about material things even in their current situation. She doesn’t know if her wife and son are still alive, and she wishes she had a pair of shoes.

 She ties Milla to her back, a mock up of the back carrier either she or Clarke wear when they go hiking with the kids back home. She uses a bed sheet now. She picks Jake up, steeling her legs and aching knees to carry both of them.

  Lexa makes her way downstairs, mentally guards herself as she’s saying goodbye to the roof she’s been under since the wave hit. It feels vulnerable outside, everything just a little bit more real. They have nothing. She’s lost.

 “Is there room left?” she asks the man helping people climb into the back of a truck. “I have two children with me.”

 Lexa tucks Jake against her, stretching to see if there’s any space in the cramped back of the car.

 “Is full,” the man tells her, in heavily accented english. She thinks maybe he speaks french. A tourist, like her. It’s so strange that this was supposed to be a vacation.

 “Are you sure?” she asks, wondering how long it’ll take the cars to drive to and from the hospital, how far it could be. She doesn’t remember one when they drove from the airport. She can’t feed her children two kids for a single day. 

 “They come back,” he tells her. “First 3. Again tomorrow.”

 “They come back at 3?” she asks.

 “Yes, yes.” He nods. 

 Lexa looks around, looks at the sky. Looks to the distance, where her hotel used to be. She could…

 “I’m sorry, what time is it?”

 The man looks at his watch, and then shakes his head, simply gets off the truck and extends his wrist for Lexa to see for herself. Numbers are universal. 

It’s not even 12 yet. 

She thanks him and makes her way back to the building.

 

 

  

“You’re not going to open the door to anyone, okay? Even if they say they want to help. Do you understand?”

 Jake nods, though he seems terrified.

 The man who slept in the room next to them is gone. The hotel is quiet. Most people have left or are waiting down there to leave. 

 Not Lexa.  

She’s setting up her children in a room in one of the top floors.

 Her back aches from carrying Milla already, and it was only a short walk up the stairs. She’s hurt, she knows she is, though she doesn’t much care. It hurts her but the truth is Jake and Milla will only slow her down. She she can’t afford that right now, she needs to find their brother, their mother.

 She has time, just until 3, but still time. Two hours if she pushes herself to walk faster despite her injuries.  

 One last chance to search for her wife and son where it happened.

 “Pinky promise?” she asks Aden and Milla, and Milla nods happily, linking her finger with Lexa. Jake eyes her warily.

 “Mama, don’t leave. You said you wouldn’t,” he whines.

 “It’s just for a bit,” Lexa promises him. She used to leave him in the car of the people who had also taken refuge here, but they’re alone now. “I’m going to go look for mommy and Aden.”

 “I can help you look,” Jake says earnestly. 

 “I help!” Milla pipes up.

 Lexa smiles.

 “Don’t open the door to anyone, understood?”

 Jake bites his lip.

 “Promise me Jakey,” Lexa pleads. “I need you to be very, very brave and look after Milla while I’m gone.”

 “Okay,” Jake says finally. Lexa kisses the side of his head, and the Milla’s, when she too asks for kisses.

 “Don’t open the door no matter what, okay?”

 Jake nods.

 “Okay, mama.” 

The windows are shut tight, and she pushes a closet in front of them for good measure. She hands Jake the packet of cookies and water bottle she still has, and then, with her heart on her throat, gets ready to leave.

 “You’re gonna lock the door when I’m outside, okay?”

 Jake nods. He bites his lips but he’s so, so brave. 

 She steps outside the room. Her eyes do another once over of every surface, but there’s nothing they could get hurt with. There’s no electricity. No way out of the room. It’ll be okay.

 She waves to her babies and closes the door.

 Milla immediately starts crying.

 Lexa swallows, hard.

 “Lock it!” she tells Jake through the door. She hears the pop of the lock.

 Lexa tries, but she can’t open it. 

 “Okay, good. I’ll be back.”

 “Okay!”

 “Don’t open the door to anyone but me, okay? And don’t make any noise. Not even if someone asks!”

 “Okay!” 

“I love you both,” Lexa tells them. She turns around before she hears an answer.

 

 

  

She walks further than before, and much faster.

 Thick drops of sweat roll down her back and neck, and her legs sting the minute water covers them, a testament to the many cuts and scratches she’s been trying to ignore, but she doesn’t give up.

 She needs to find them.

 She makes it to the ruins of what used to be their hotel. Lexa wonders if her bags are around here somewhere, if their side of the building is intact enough that she could find a shirt and pants for Milla to wear over her bathing suit.

 Lexa looks around.

 The area looks untouched by human hands, if only because no one has recovered the bodies she sees. She covers her mouth and nose with her sweat drenched shirt. It’s been far too many hours under the hot sun and inside water.

 She keeps her eyes open for blond hair, even though it kills her.

 She enters the hotel.  

It’s wrecked, barely standing up. It was right besides the coast, and the wooden walls must have taken the brunt of the water. The vicious waves have dragged most everything away, but she still makes her way inside.

 “Clarke! Aden!” 

The water is up to her waist inside, and she wades as quickly as she can through it, trying not to flinch every time her legs make contact with something underneath the surface.

 “Clarke!”

 The stairs are covered in debris. She can’t make her way up, and she’s sure no one could have before. They’re not here.

 She wades back out. 

 She walks along the coast, beside the upside down cars and the torn metal, looking, calling out, trying…not to lose hope.

 The water is up to her knees when she has to resort to stepping over the remnants of a gazebo of some sort. She climbs onto it. It gives her a better vantage point, but she realizes there’s not much more that she can search without trying to swim in the murky waters below.

 But to her left, where the pools used to be…if Clarke got hit there, then the water would have carried her forward. She’s been searching in the wrong place. Her assumption was that Clarke must have held on to something but if she was dragged, then she and Aden could be- she turns sharply- those trees…she never thought about trees, their branches seemed too high, but if they got there when the water was high then maybe -Lexa whips her head- then maybe-

 The floor moves and takes her with it.

 Hear head hits the ground.

 

 

  

Everything is pounding. 

She can hear water running, rushing by. Or is that her blood in her ears? 

She can’t make sense of anything.

 She’s dizzy. Heavy. Confused.

 And then she feels pressure and the world tilts, and she inhabits her body again. She remembers that she was looking for Clarke and Aden, and she fell.

  And now she’s being moved.

 She tries to speak but no sound comes out. Her eyes are so heavy.

 “It’s okay, we’re going to help you,” someone says.

 Lexa tries to shake her head.

 “No…” she mouths, coaxing her lips into forming the word. It’s more difficult than anything she’s done.

 “Put her down, put her down. Here.”

 “Should we be moving her neck?”

 “We couldn’t leave her back there, the car can’t make it.”

 “Hey, are you waking up?” 

“What’s your name?”

 The sounds are discombobulated, disjointed, feel very far away.

 “My ki…”

 “What was that?”

 Something tickles her. She thinks maybe it’s someone’s hair, kneeling over her to listen to what she’s trying to say. She tries even harder.

 “My kids…” she says, as clear as she can. She left Jake and Milla at the hotel, locked in a room. She needs to get back.

 “Poor woman,” she hears someone say, even further away.

 She feels a pat on her shoulder.

 “We’re headed for the mountains, they’ll help you there,” someone promises.

 Lexa doesn’t have strength to protest. Her head pounds and her eyelids are too heavy.

 She slips into oblivion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun, dun, dun. Like I told -the quite a bit of people that asked, I'm so sorry- on my tumblr, I would never hurt a child. Milla is okay! Except now Lexa isn't, but at least she's getting help. Though that help might do more harm than good. Do you hate me yet? 
> 
> There's a happy ending at the end of all this angst though, so thanks for reading and bearing with me.
> 
> If you like my writing, there's a significantly less angsty, humorous stormchasers!au me and the lovely [mmeister911 ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mmeister911/pseuds/mmeister911) are co-writing. You can find it [here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10845372/chapters/24077310) Has anyone ever read a Clexa weather fic? If not, then we're here for you. ;)


	7. Chapter 7

Everything is loud when she comes to.

 

There’s a rushing sound in her ears and Clarke isn’t sure if it’s her blood, or water. Maybe she dreamed her rescue, maybe she even dreamed finding Aden. She could still be drifting, direction less, drowning. The sea ripping her body to shreds and doing the same to her family.

 

Clarke shakes her head to the side, trying to get away from the images.

 

“Mom?” she hears a voice ask, and she focuses on it. 

 

Aden. Her boy.

 

“Mom!?” 

 

She feels him, suddenly. His hands on her cheeks. She begins to come back into her body.

 

It’s excruciating. 

 

“Mom! She’s awake!” Aden’s gone, and Clarke wants to call for him to come back but she can’t. She feels tied down. “Help! Please.”

 

There’s steps around her. Then prodding.

 

“Mrs. Griffin?”

 

She opens one eye, then the other. The world burns, or it could just be her eyes.

 

"It's-" she coughs, her throat raw. "It's Griffin-Woods."

 

"Mom!"

 

Aden's arms are around her in as much of a hug as he can muster while she's lying on a bed, and she makes an effort to raise her arms and envelope him as well. She's here, on the other side. She made it.

 

 And she's never letting go.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s hot where she is.

 

It’s one of the few thoughts that languidly swirl through Clarke's mind as she finishes coming out of the anesthetic stupor she was in moments before. 

 

Aden sits next to hair, his head laying over his arms, resting on the side of her bed. He must be exhausted. The bed is small and she can barely move, but if she could, she’d ask him to get on or take it instead of her. He told her how she waited outside the OR, and Clarke can’t imagine what it was like.

 

She’s never been on that side of the doors.

 

She runs her fingers through Aden’s hair, and he speaks in his sleep, frowning.

 

 She’s all he has now. She’s…she’s almost sure of it.

 

Now that she has distance away from everything that happened, now that she has information, that she can understand the cheer magnitude of it…her hope dwindles. And she knows holding on to false hope will kill her faster than her injuries ever could. But she can’t think about it either. She can’t consider that her babies are gone, that her wife is too, that she’ll never kiss them or hug them again.

 

Everything in her vision goes dark when she does.

 

So she forces herself to remain in limbo.

 

She forces herself to live in the past, to escape the humid hospital and her bed and the pain, and remember every family vacation before this one, every drawing she stuck on the fridge, every smile she shared with her family. 

 

And hope that things will be better soon.

 

(It’s easier said than down. Her very heart cries out in hope that Lexa is alright, that Milla and Jake made it, regardless of what her brain tried to do.)

 

A tear falls down her cheek.

 

“Mom? Are you okay?” 

 

She looks down at Aden. She didn’t realize when he woke up.

 

“Does anything hurt? I can call a-”

 

“I’m okay,” she assures him, cupping his cheek. 

 

“You sure?”

 

She nods, and makes an effort to sit up, and wipe her tears. She needs to be strong for him. It’s what Lexa would want. 

 

Aden looks down at her legs, and Clarke looks properly at her left food for the first time. Her flesh is red and angry. She’s more hurt than she thought.

 

“Does it hurt?” he asks.

 

Clarke shakes her head. In all honesty, she feels mostly numb below her knee.

 

“No, I’m okay.”

 

Aden doesn’t look away.

 

“Cover me up, I’m getting chilly,” she says, even as sweat drips down between her breasts. He can’t see her like this. 

 

Aden tugs the blanket over her feet.

 

“Mom?” he asks, sitting back down on the chair beside her.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Do you think we’ll find their bodies?”

 

Clarke freezes. 

 

“What was that?”

 

“Nothing,” he says.

 

Clarke swallows her tears. Flashes of caskets and flowers and mud attack her mind, and for one second she can’t breathe. 

 

“Aden…”

 

“They’re dead, aren’t they?”

 

Clarke bites her lip.

 

“We’re not,” she says. “They could be okay, too.”

 

“Could,” Aden repeated. “Maybe. You don’t know.”

 

“Aden-”

 

“No one knows!”

 

His shoulders rise and fall with agitated breaths, and he takes a step back when she reaches for him, intent on comforting him like she did when he was just a little boy, waking up from a nightmare. 

 

He shakes her off now.

 

“Promise they’re okay,” he pleads. “Promise we’ll find them.”

 

But Clarke can’t. And she can’t lie to him. 

 

“Mom-”

 

Clarke thinks back to three days ago. How she longed to hear the word fall from his lips again, how she’d wanted to be called by the name she’d earned along with his affection, little by little. She’s never heard the worst sound so heartbreaking before. She almost wishes she was deaf.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t. But I hope we will. We got out, there’s a chance your mom grabbed them and ran before the wave hit, they could have-”

 

“You’re lying,” he tells her, clenching his fists. Clarke was. She doesn’t believe it herself. She’s tried to remember if she saw Lexa exit the pool, she tries to put together where she was and where they all were, but her memories are clogged and sluggish.

 

So she was lying, but it was a lie she almost believed herself.

 

“Aden-”

 

“Stop lying! Jake and Mila are dead!” he yells. “And so is mom!”

 

The room is quiet for a moment.

 

Clarke looks around and see the stairs, not pity, no, but understanding. The feeling behind the words transcends language. Everybody in this room is Aden. They’ve all lost so much.

 

“Aden, we don’t know that,” she tells him softly. “Not yet. I hope…I hope they’re okay, out there, looking for us. We just have to wait."

 

He plops back down on the chair, laying his head on her pillow. His dirty hair tickles her cheek. Clarke cups the back of his head. She didn't know him as a baby, and neither did Lexa. They never got to hold him like this when he was small enough to fit in their arms.

 

"I love you," she tells him, feeling the need to remind him of the fact. It's the one thing she can hold on to.

 

If she didn't have Aden here, Clarke's sure she'd be dead.

 

"Me too," he says, voice thick. He lifts his head, angrily wipes away at the tears leaving two clean trails down his cheeks.  “Can I go look for them?” he asks.

 

Clarke shakes her head immediately. The thought of him wandering outside, between the bodies and the mud, chills her blood.

 

“No, it’s too dangerous.”

 

“But, mom-”

 

“You can go find a guard," she says instead. "Find out if there are…lists, of survivors. Do you remember the name of our hotel?” He nods. “Okay. So do that.”

 

The thought of having him away from her view almost makes her panic, but she knows the feeling of needing to do something.

 

“And then what?”

 

Clarke smiles, her mouth unaccustomed to the feeling after the past two days . There was nothing better for that nagging feeling than to help.

 

“Go make yourself useful, Aden,” she tells him. “I’d try if I could walk. So you have to do this for me, okay? Go help someone.”

 

There’s so much destruction around her. So much pain and suffering. She can’t ignore it, but she can’t do anything about it either, and it kills her. She’s a doctor through and through, even if it’s been so long since she last wore white on pulled on gloves.

 

“What?” Aden asks, standing up. “I- I can´t. I’m not a doctor like you. I can’t help anyone.”

 

Clarke smiles. 

 

“Yes, you can.” He’s such a good boy, he’s turning into such a good young man, and Clarke believes in him, she always has. “There are so many people hurting, Aden. You can do something. You can _try_.”

 

She sees the change in his face when he believes her.

 

He nods firmly.

 

“Don’t go anywhere,” he says.

 

Clarke squeezes his hand before nudging him away. 

 

“I won’t, I promise. Now go.”


	8. Chapter 8

“She’s waking up.”

 

Lexa’s head buzzes as she gingerly opens her eyes.

 

“Here, drink some water,” someone says. She feels the cold liquid hit her lips, but she is in no condition to drink it. She coughs, and suddenly someone is turning her on her side. It makes the world swim back into focus. 

 

For a minute, Lexa thinks she's going to wake up to Clarke, to their warm bed and sunlight coming in through the windows. That she’s going to hear Jake and Milla run into her bedroom and then get to open her eyes as they jump into bed with her, all of them trying to steal a few more minutes of sleep from the new day. That she’d see Aden standing in the door, looking at them, too embarrassed to walk inside and make himself at home like he did when he was little.

 

Instead, all she sees is dirt, in the low light of a led light. It’s dark. It’s night.

 

And it comes back at once. Reality is heartless and ruthless.

 

Their vacation, the wave, losing Clarke and Aden and Milla, finding her girl but seeing no sign of her wife and oldest son. The fear, the dread. Having to leave for the mountains.

 

Jake and Milla waiting for her.

 

“My children,” she gasps, sitting up.

 

Hands try to hold her down but she pushes them away.

 

“I’m sorry-”

 

They look at her with pity, two men and a woman, and Lexa just looks around, then kneels, looks over the metal wall keeping her from seeing around her.

 

She’s in the back of a truck.

 

And she doesn’t recognize where they are.

 

“Calm down,” the woman begs her. “We’re going to the mountains, they’ll help you there.”

 

Lexa shakes her head.

 

“They might even find your kids,” one of the men adds.

 

“They were with me!” She exclaims, finding her voice.

 

“What?”

 

“They’re at the hotel I was staying at,” she explains, looking for a way to get off the truck. Her leg is worse than before.

 

“They’re…they’re alive?”

 

“Yes!” She’s desperate now. She doesn’t recognize the road, how can she get back? Tears choke her. “I left them there. I went searching for my other son and my wife- Where are we?”

 

“Sorry, we thought-”

 

“Where are we?!” Lexa demands again.

 

“I- I don’t-”

 

“What hotel?” The woman asks. Lexa tells her.

 

“We’re an hour away, tops,” she says. Her accent is British. Her clothes are just as torn as Lexa’s. She looks to the road. She takes a breath and begins to calm down. They were trying to help.

 

“What happened?” She asks, softer now. “I think I-” She touches the back of her head. “I think I fell.”

 

“We found you on the ground,” one of the men tells her. “We thought you’d..survived the wave and no one had found you yet. I mean, you were pretty far way from the survivors.”

 

She nods.

 

“How long-”

 

“We’ve just been parked here a few hours,” the woman assures her. “The road is too dangerous during the night, and the sun was going down. Power is still down.”

 

“Your kids-”

 

“They’re 5 and my little girl is just 3,” she says. “I left them…” It stings her to say. She left her babies and now they’re so far away from her. Terrible images flood her head, of another wave, worse than before, coming into land. Of someone finding them, someone with no help to offer.

 

They were defenseless, and she just left.

 

But Clarke and Aden-

 

“Maybe someone else-”

 

“I left them alone,” she says, looking down to avoid the judgment she’s sure she’ll find in their eyes. “They’re locked inside a room and they know not to open the door to anyone but I- I don’t know, I just-” She drags her hand down her face, the grime in her hands and face combining into a single film of misery. “I just had to look for my wife and son once more before we left for the mountains.”

 

What time is it? How long until the sun comes up? How long until Jake loses his patience and opens the door, how long until they get hungry and cry for her and she’s not there. If they aren’t already.

 

 

She tries to keep it in. But a single sob leaves her lip. 

 

The woman puts her arm over her shoulder.

 

“It’s not that far away,” she says. “We can make it back.”

 

Lexa looks up.

 

They look at each other, and she sees similar expression of certainty falling over the faces of these strangers before her.

 

“Yeah, we’ll do it,” on of the men says, and jumps off back of the truck only to get in the driver’s seat.

 

Lexa breathes. 

 

“We’ll find your kids,” the woman says. “They’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

 

Lexa nods.

 

Looking into the endless, inky night as the car starts up, she wants to believe her.

 

 

 

 

They are right that it’s not a long drive, but it feels like the longest hour of Lexa’s life.

 

They take the treacherous perhaps faster than they should, running over fallen trees and scrap metal, and she wishes she had it in her to tell these strangers to slow down, that they had to get there alive, but Lexa only wants them to go faster.

 

It feels like days have passed between telling Jake to close the door and now, even though it hasn’t been more than a few hours. It feels like years of her life have flown by between getting off that plane with her whole family, and being alone in this speeding truck. Was it the right choice? To go in a vacation instead of staying home like Aden wanted. (Aden. Where is her son?) To go to the pool with Clarke so early, maybe they should have gone after long and things wouldn’t be what they are. Was it the right call to leave Jake and Milla alone while she searched for them?

 

Lexa isn’t sure of anything.

 

Without Clarke, she never is. Clarke is her wife, her better half. The only person capable of keeping her head on her shoulders and being Lexa’s moral compass, the same way she is Clarke’s sounding board. They complement each other. And she’s lucky enough that that amazing, beautiful woman found her, and promised to stick by her side for the rest of their lives. 

 

‘Til death do us part. 

 

Is this it?

 

A knot forms in her throat, thicker than before. This can’t be it. She can’t tell her little ones they don’t have a mother anymore. She can’t tell them their big brother is lost forever. 

 

The truck lurches particularly hard to the side, and Lexa grabs the side of the trunk even harder than before. The cold night wind whips her face, the dirt in her hands and cheeks has dried beneath it. And then. There it is.

 

“I see it!” She says, the sound of people and the light of one or two fires unmistakable even in the deep darkness.

 

“Where was it?” One of the men asks, and Lexa shakes her head. It’ll be faster if she runs.

 

“I’ll go on foot,” she tells him, turning around. “Park here.”

 

“Let us go with you,” the woman tells her, and Lexa doesn’t think about it. She just nods and takes off. They follow.

 

She’s never been one to ask for help. Clarke always chastised her for it, every single time she tried to fix a big project by herself on the house, or wanted to cut down their Christmas tree herself, or struggled in any way. She didn’t like being dependent on anyone. She never had. She’d only learned because of Clarke, she’d only accepted her help, longed for it at times, even when she was capable. 

 

Things were easier with Clarke standing by her side, helping her carry the weight.

 

It’s Clarke’s face she sees now as she accepts these strangers help in retrieving what matters most to her in the world. If Jake and Milla…if they’re not where she left them, she’ll need all the help she can get looking.

 

 

“It’s upstairs,” she tells them, breathing hard, when they get there.

 

She climbs the stairs two at a time, and she’s screaming at the top of her lungs before she even makes it to the floor.

 

 

“Jake! Milla!” 

 

She runs to the door, her bare feet slipping in the tiles. She bangs her open palm on the door. “Jake!”

 

The door knob twists to the side.

 

“Mama!”

 

She falls to her knees and pulls Jake to her chest.

 

“Baby.”

 

“Mama, you took so long,” he complains, hugging her back tightly. 

 

Her companions reach the tops of the stairs, and stop a few feet away from them.

 

She sees smiles on their faces.

 

“How’s your sister?” She’s quick to ask, getting up and walking inside, her eyes searching for Milla. 

 

“Asleep,” Jake answers, rubbing his eyes, and Lexa realizes he probably was asleep too. “Did you find mommy? Who are they?” He asks, turning around to see the people who accompanied her.

 

“I’m Marie,” the woman tells  him.

 

“You speak funny,” Jake says. The British woman -Marie- laughs. Jake turns back towards Lexa. “Did you find mommy?”  he asks again. 

 

She swallows.

 

“Not yet, baby,” she says, picking up Milla carefully. She doesn’t even fuzz as Lexa puts her over her shoulder. She’s always been a light sleeper, always had trouble to fall asleep and stay that way, ever since she was a baby. But now she doesn’t even realize she’s been moved. Just how exhausted is her baby girl? Just how much of a mark is this going to leave in her, in all of them?

 

“Are we gonna keep looking?” Jake asks, holding her hand when she offers it. 

 

They slowly make their way out of the room.

 

The bottle of water she gave them rests on the floor, now empty, and so does the wrapper for the junk food. They have no more food. It’s late and dark. They have no shoes. 

 

She knows with a heavy heart then she can’t keep doing this to them.

 

If Clarke was here…she’d tell her to put their little ones first. To keep them safe. 

 

And that’s what Lexa is going to do.

 

“We’re going to go up to the mountains, okay? And we’re going to find some food and a phone to call grandma, and everything’s going to be fine.”

 

“And mommy and Aden?”

 

Lexa bites her lip, hard. One step at a time.

 

“Then we’ll find them.”

 

 

 

 

They get to the refuge just as dawn breaks. 

 

She holds Milla in her lap in the back seat of the truck, while Jake dozes off against her side.

 

Not for the first time in the past few hours, Lexa wishes her arm span was larger, that she could just curl around them and hide them away from the world. She wishes she was strong enough to carry both of them without getting tired. She remembers them as babies, Jake toddling around while Milla was a newborn, remembers how tiny they both used to be, how she used to hold Jake in her lap so he could hold Milla in turn. He was so careful.

 

And then she remembers Aden looking down on them both and Clarke taking pictures, and her heart is heavy.

 

She hasn’t slept a wink.

 

It drags her down into the dirt, but she knows the weight her bones seem to carry won’t abate with a shower or a good night’s sleep. It will only get better when she holds her wife and oldest son again. 

 

There are working phones in the mountains.

 

She heads for a woman speaking on a cell phone with single-minded determination, and unwittingly drags a half-asleep Jake behind her.

 

She gets a minute.

 

Lexa calls Abby.

 

Is the first call she knows she has to make, because she’s okay, and Milla and Jake are okay, but Clarke…she doesn’t know about Clarke, and her mother in law doesn’t deserve to be in the dark. Abby will tell the others. 

 

The phone only rings once.

 

“Lexa!” The relief in Abby’s voice is palpable, and it makes Lexa’s heart constrict inside her ribcage. “We saw it on the news! Oh god, please tell me you’re all right-”

 

“I have Jake and Milla,” she says. Her voice sounds strange to her own ears. Tired, exhausted, yes. But more than that. Beneath the hoarseness she sounds empty.

 

“Oh, thank God. Lexa has the little ones,” Abby says, though it’s quieter, not meant for her. Like she pulled away from the phone to let everyone else know…but Clarke. “They’re okay,” Abby says again, her voice even farther away.

 

They’re not. Not all of them, they’re not.

 

“Abby!”

 

“Lexa, what’s wrong?”

 

“Abby, I don’t know about Clarke.” She tries to breathe in but it gets harder. Milla begins to wake up in her arms at the commotion. “I don’t know where Aden is,” she gasps out. “I don't…I don't know if they're okay, I’m so sorry.”

 

A sob escapes her, and then she feels Jake’s little arms hugging her waist for dear life.

 

She can’t do this, not in front of them. But she can’t stop.

 

She’s never felt this fragile.

 

“…She’s not with Clarke.” She hears Abby relay the painful news to the rest of their family, and she pulls the phone away from her face so she can drag her hand over it, the grime washing away with her tears. 

 

“Mama, the phone,” Jake says, looking up at her with watery eyes. 

 

Lexa puts it back on her ear, and catches Abby mid-speech.

 

“-get separated? Where you near the coast?”

 

“What?” she asks. “I’m sorry, I-”

 

“Where you together when it happened? Is it possible she and Aden went somewhere else? Where are you?”

 

She shakes her head. She’s thought it all twenty, thirty times over.

 

“We were all together. We were with the kids at the pool, right near- right near he beach. I was holding on to Milla and Jake when it hit, the water-”

 

She thinks of the moment her daughter got ripped away by the tide, the feelings of her little fingers slipping between her own. It was the worst moment of her life.

 

“The water was too strong and we got separated, but I found her later, she was with some people.” 

 

She hopes Abby will punish her, that someone will validate her feeling like a terrible mother for losing her child.

 

“I didn’t see Clarke or Aden right after. I went looking, but I can’t find them, I can’t-”

 

“Lexa! It’s okay.”

 

But it’s not. And if she never finds them they never will be again.

 

Someone taps her on the shoulder, and she looks up to find the woman who lent her the phone signaling that she needs it back.

 

“Abby, I have to go!”

 

“Lexa, no-”

 

“I won’t stop looking, I promise,” she tells her desperately. “I’ll search every hospital. I’ll find them. I will find them.”

 

The phone is torn away from her, handed to other desperate people with torn apart families. Her case isn’t special. She’s surrounded by people who are going through the same thing. 

 

And yet she feels supremely alone.


	9. Chapter 9

Aden smiles as he sees the tall man fall to his knees to hug his son. He made that happen. Sort of. He helped. He went from room to room, asking for their names, and a family is together again now because of that.

 

He can’t wait to tell his mom. 

 

It’s easy to make his way back to the wing of the hospital his mom is staying in. The walls look very much the same everywhere, but after roaming the halls for hours he knows which stairs to climb and at the end of which hallway to turn.

 

He walks inside and to her bed.

 

And then he thinks he must have made a mistakes, because that’s not Clarke.

 

He circles back, makes sure he entered the right room. He knows in his gut he did but he still has to check. He doesn’t understand what the word outside means, but he knows that it’s the same as before. His breaths come faster.

 

“Mom?” he asks, his head whipping around the room. Maybe they moved her. But he can’t see her, can’t find her anywhere. “Mom!” 

 

He walks around the room, not caring when people begin to sit up and stare, some with annoyance and others with pity. Aden is afraid of those looks. His chest tightens. He just needs his mom.

 

“You!” he calls out to a nurse, before running towards her. “That was my mom’s bed!” he tells her, pointing backwards. “Where is she?!”

 

The woman presses her lips together.

 

“I need you to come with me,” she says in near perfect english. It sounds to him like a rehearsed phrase. Like something she’s used to telling kids looking for their parents. She looks down at him like Aden feels people look down at wounded birds or a puppy before it gets put down. 

 

I’m sorry about the bad news I’m about to deliver, the look says.

 

Aden’s eyes sting.

 

“It was just two of you?” she asks, and Aden nods. He tries to keep it together. “Follow me, please.”

 

His feet stay rooted to the spot. 

 

“Where is she?” He asks, even though he thinks he knows the answer. Dread turns his body to ice.

 

The woman presses her lips together again, and Aden hopes they stay like that just so he doesn’t have to hear. She shakes her head.

 

 

He’d thought he’d had enough of water already, but can’t help it when the tears start to fall.  He’s alone. They’re all gone and he’s alone.

 

He fought so much with his moms. He yelled at Lexa -his first mom, the woman who saved him when he was a toddler and she was just out of college. He didn’t want to come. He was stupid enough that he wanted to spend time with his stupid friends that he saw every day rather than spend time with his family.

 

His family…

 

He groaned every time he had to babysit Milla. He ignored Jake asking him to play with him because he was too busy playing video games. It all comes back now and it rips through his chest.

 

And Clarke…

 

His mom too. He didn’t call her that for so long for so many stupid reasons. He was an idiot. And now... He turns his head, looking at the bed she occupied and that she doesn’t any longer. He covers his eyes, hoping he was still young and it meant he was hidden from everything, from this.

 

He jumps when he feels the nurse’s hand on his shoulder.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says simply. “Let’s go.”

 

He helplessly falls into step after her.

 

Aden doesn’t remember being in the system, but he imagines this is what it might feel like -only a hundred times worse.

 

He’s alone.

 

 

 

She carries Milla on her back. 

 

She uses a discarded sheet to make a sort of sling, and her little girl is content to sit against her back. It’s not the baby wrap carrier she and Clarke used when Milla was a baby, but it does its job. 

 

Lexa’s arms get tired.

 

She left the refugee a mere day after they arrived, after making sure Jake and Milla ate enough and asking for a few bottles of water and packets of cookies and chips for the road. Before, she was so concerned about getting her family to eat healthy food, about not allowing crappy junk food into her house except for once or twice a month…now, she’s never been more thankful for oreos.

 

She carries it in a plastic bag. They give her a pair of shoes, and she declines a shirt in favor of getting Jake a pair of slippers. They’re much too big for him, but at least he can walk.

 

And they do, quite a bit.

 

One of the cars from the refuge leaves them at the doors of a hospital, and Lexa searches through every list, every room, asks every nurse or doctor who speaks english. There are a lot of blond, american tourists, and Lexa’s heart jumps in her chest every time she’s led to a room, only to find that the woman lying unconscious in the hospital bed is not her wife. She silently wishes them well while turning around, fighting against her dwindling hopes.

 

It’s a blow, every single time.

 

 

It ships away at her, but Lexa swallows the disappointment down and forces herself to keep walking. After 2 hospitals and a refugee camp and nothing, it gets harder.

 

She looks up. The sky is tinted orange, the sun about to fall. She sits on the front steps of the white building, surrounded by survivors, locals and tourists alike. All of them searching like she is, most of them finding no one, like herself. It’s a strange kind of way to deal with the loneliness threatening to swallow her.

 

She’s not the only one going through this. Jake sits down next to her. Lexa shakes her head. She’s not the only missing Clarke and Aden, and whatever she’s feeling, her children are feeling magnified. Lexa can’t lose sight of that. 

 

She unties the wrap from her back, and Milla kneels on the steps, crawling around to climb on her lap. Her thumb is firmly between her lips, but Lexa doesn’t even think about correcting her.

 

“I’m tired of walking, mommy,” Jake says, leaning against her side. Lexa wraps her arm around his shoulders, and tugs him even closer.

 

“I know,” she says. “Just a little more tomorrow, okay?”

 

She asks, what she’s been asking for 2 days now. Jake is a trooper, he’s yet to say ‘no’.

 

He nods.

 

“I’m still tired,” he says. Lexa smiles. 

 

“Come here.”

 

Lexa leans back against the wall, and pats the step just above the one she’s sitting in. She wishes she had a pillow to offer him, a sleeping bag, a warm bed. It goes against everything she is to let him sleep on the floor, but she has nothing but it. She stretches out Milla on her legs, her daughter’s head resting on her lap. 

 

Lexa spreads the sheet turned carried over them both.

 

Lexa’s feet stick out in the end, and the cool breeze tickles her toes. She shivers. She has no idea how much longer she can do this, not with Jake and Milla here. Enough time has passed since the tsunami stroke that help is getting here, and she’s sure she could contact her work, her insurance company, someone, to come pick them up. Do the U.S. have an embassy here?

 

There has to be an option, to fly  her family back to the states.

 

But Lexa is stalling. She doesn’t want to speak up. She doesn’t want to get carted of into car and to a place maybe 3,5 hours away. She doesn’t want to leave the country when she’d be leaving half of her heart behind.

 

She still knows she can’t do this to her children indefinitely. 

 

Jake and Milla are resilient, she knows that, her little ones are so brave -but Lexa can’t keep asking them to be. Clarke would want her to look after them better than what she has been.

 

She drags her hand down her face, tasting salt -sweat from all the hours under the sun.

 

“Blanket?”

 

She looks up, to meet the eye eyes of woman dressed all in green. It takes Lexa’s tired brain to recognize her as one of the nurses from the hospital.

 

She nods.

 

“Yes, thank you.” 

 

The woman smiles, and Lexa takes the thick blanket from her hands. It’s heavier than what she’s been using to cover the three of them, and thicker, and it instantly makes her feel better to drape it over her children and herself.

 

It reminds her of warm mornings back home, of waking up next to Clarke and kissing her awake, of having her smile and her beautiful eyes be the first thing she sees in the morning. It brings her back to Jake and Milla waking up and sneaking out of their room only to barge into theirs. 

 

She and Clarke never minded.

 

They would welcomed their children into their bed, and steal a few more minutes from the new day. Sometimes, even Aden joined in. 

 

She falls asleep leaning back against the hard stone wall, and she could swear she smells pancakes.


	10. Chapter 10

There are children crying in every corner. 

Aden wants to find it in himself to get up and comfort them, since there the two nurses that tend to all of them always seem busy, but he can’t move at all. It’s as if he’s frozen in place, just like his mind has been for the past few hours. 

He can’t think about the future.

He’s lost hope that his mom or Milla or Jake might be okay, and now that Clarke is gone he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t have it in him to ask for a phone to call home, but even if he did he doesn’t think he remembers his grandma’s number by heart. He doesn’t know if there are computers available somewhere. He tries to remember if he saw any back at the hospital, but he can’t.

Every second he spent between those stark white walls feels like a bad dream he can’t wake up from, and even trying to remember is painful.

Aden doesn’t know where he goes from here. 

What happens when he gets home, whenever and however that happens? Does he move in with his grandma? Does he go back to a system he doesn’t remember? He wants to think Abby wouldn’t let that happen. (Would she even have a choice? Or is a child like signing a contract, and now that his moms are gone the government is going to take him back?)

The kid at the far back keeps crying. 

He has pale hair and pale blue eyes, and the sticker in his shirt says “Robin”. He looks like a tourist. Aden wonders if the little boy, who looks no older than four or five, also came to vacation with his family, and lot them in the process. He wonder if he was scared of flying like Aden was. If he likes coloring like Milla does. Maybe that’s why he’s crying. They have them all in a tent and there’s not enough crayons and coloring books to go around for everyone, and anyways, there’s not enough of those to make them forget they’re orphans now.

Aden gets up. The nurses are so busy they don’t notice him as he quietly makes his way to the open flap of the tent. He needs to get some air, needs to breathe it an atmosphere that doesn’t reek of grief and sorrow.

The sun shines bright outside.

 

 

Lexa leaves them on the steps of the hospital.

Her back hurts, and both Milla and Jake are too tired to keep walking, so she has to put them down for a second. She finds a woman with children of her own, and Lexa remembers just enough french from her college years to get her to keep an eye on both of them while they play with the woman’s twin boys.

“Tell anyone who asks your mom is inside and you're waiting for her, okay? Don't go anywhere,” she says, grabbing their hands. Jake nods, serious, while Milla’s eyes wander around, desperate to play with the ball the boys have. “Don’t let anyone take you anywhere,” she tells Jake, and her son nods again.

She nods the dangers of leaving them alone, she’s faced them before, but she doesn’t have a choice. She’s not leaving them alone this time. This woman will watch over them while she makes her way inside the hospital, the last one she hasn’t checked in the area, and asks about Aden and Clarke. It’s her last chance, and she has to take it -but her legs are swollen and her feet are burnt from the hot asphalt, and her back hurts from the weight of her children. She can’t take another step like that.

“Promise?” she asks.

“I promise,” Jake tells her, grabbing Milla’s hand. He looks too grown up for his five years. Lexa hates that this has happened to him. To them.

“I’ll be right back,” she says. She takes her shirt off, the heat stifling, and is left only in the black bikini top and shorts she was wearing when all this started. With one last kiss to Milla and Jake’s foreheads, and a nod to the french woman, Lexa makes her way inside the bustling hospital.

She takes her shirt off only a few steps inside. The air smells like blood and sweat, but the heat is worse. It's stifling, bearing down on her in opressive clouds.She ties her shirt around her waist. For the first time since this all started Lexa’s glad to be only in the black bikini she wore at the pool. The wind occasionally blowing through the windows feels like heaven as it caresses her back and shoulders.

She weaves through the rooms and hallways of the hospital, her heart beating to the drumming song of hope.

 

 

Aden walks through the halls, his hands deep in his swimming trunk's pockets. He wanders aimlessly, trying to outrun the feeling encroaching down on him from all sides. He feels as if he walks long enough he'll leave all of this behind him. He knows it's not true, and it's childish, but he doesn't know what to do anymore. (He half hopes that one of the nurses back at the children's tents will notice he's gone and come searching for him -that someone will care at all that he's doing something he isn't supposed to. But he knows that privilege died with his family. No one cares about him here.)

He stares at the people in the hallways, makes an effort to look at their faces. A few meet his eyes, and they share a brief, fleeting connection that trascends nationalities and language. They all went through this. They all survived. Most of them are alone now.

He keeps watching, turning hallway after hallway, noticing their clothes and cataloging hair colors-

And then something catches his eye. It’s like the world moves slower as he turns around and struggles to find the person who called his attention so powerfully. A woman’s back, is what it was. And she has a tattoo he recognizes.

“…Mom?”

His heart stutters and stumbles on its way to that realization. Hopelessness has done a number on him in the past day, and he briefly considers that maybe some other woman in some other place got a tattoo just like his mom’s- until he remembers that his moms designed the last few parts of it together, to represent his brother when he was born, and then his little sister. There’s no another tattoo like that in the whole world.

Aden is running before he realizes he’s told his legs to move. 

“Mom! Mom!”

He weaves through the throngs of people, ducking under arms and jumping over bags of supplies. He stumbles and he skids on corners as he makes his way down a flight of stairs, frightened because he’s lost sight of her -he’s sure it’s her, she’s alive!- and he’s scared that he won’t be able to find her again.

He lands on the ground floor, his knees groaning against the three-step jump and a few of his cuts opening again, but he doesn’t care. He spins around, looking for her -trying to guess the path she took -and then he remembers what he’d been doing to his other mom.

He’d been calling her by her given name, as a way to rebel against her. And once when his mom had asked, he’d told her that there were many ‘moms’ in the world, but how many women named Clarke? He guesses there are more women named Lexa, but the name still rips its way out of his throat.

“Lexa! Mom! Lexa!”

He spins, screaming at the top of his lungs for a miracle. 

And then he sees the tattoo again, and holds his breath. 

 

 

Lexa feels as though she's dreaming.

She hears the voice from far away, and she recognizes it immediately, but her body almost resists seeking its origin. She doesn't want to feel the sweeping disappointment again. Her stomach has fallen like a stone every time every blonde head didn't turn out to be her son, and every Aden they had registered wasn't him. She still has hope, but hearing that faint voice calling out "Mom" feels more like wishful thinking than Aden.

And then she hears it closer still.

It starts to feel more real then, even though she can't pinpoint where it's coming from. It sounds the same it did when she was nothing but a young lawyer, trying to shield a toddler from the misgivings of his parents and the lackluster laws with nothing but herself. It sounds the same it did when he was in kindergarden and had a nightmare, and needed her to come over and check under the bed for monsters while Clarke stood guard near the door.

And she hears it now, loud and clear. And then louder.

She turns her head to the right, and then tries walking as the sound seems farther away. Where is he? Is he really here? Or is her mind making this up after the days in the heat and the nights in the cold. And she can't be the only mom here, the only one who speaks english and has a child who might be looking for her. It could refer to anyone, and there might be similar voices-

But then she hearts his voice again, right behind her, and her heart nearly stops.

"Lexa!"

Lexa feels her heart beating in her chest like a hammer, fighting against the constraints her ribs impose upon it. Her lungs expand, and she takes one breath, and then two, before turning around.

She falls to her knees.

"Aden!"

"Mom!"

His skin is pale and covered in cuts and bruises, but its her son who launches himself into her arms. She doesn't know who starts cying first, but soon enough they're both breathing hard and holding each other tighter than they ever have before. She can't believe he's here. She hasn't breathed this deeply since before the water covered them, since they were just a family on vacation, and she's so incredibly thankful to everyone who might be responsible for bringing her son back into her arms.

"Mom. Mom, I missed you so much. I thought you were dead, mom." He repeats the words over and over again, hidden agaisnt her neck, and Lexa holds him even tighter, sitting in her lap as though he was still a little boy and not the young man he was starting to become.

"I'm here," she repeats. "I'm here." She rains kisses on his forehead. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

She brings herself to pull away rom if only to hold his head in her hands and meet his eyes, check that he's okay, make sure that he's real because it still feels like a dream that he's here.

"I'm fine," he tells her, covering her hands with his own. "I'm okay."

Lexa nods, the tears still falling from her eyes, and then she's hugging him again. She doesn't think she can bring herself to stop any time soon. But then he speaks, muffled, against her chest.

"I was with her, mom."

Her chest clenches. At once, she knows who Aden means. And by the way he says the words, she knows what has happened. Lexa swallows, a lifetime of love flashing behind her closed eyelids. Her wife. The mother of her children. Her Clarke.

Still, she has to ask.

"Where is she? What happened."

Aden clutches her tighter, and Lexa tries not to fold in on herself.

"When they wave hit, I saw mama-" Lexa's heart hurt. Aden hadn't called her that since he was small. And he hadn't called her 'mom' at all in the weeks leading up to this trip. They'd been so apart. "We found each other in the water, and we got onto a trip. Her leg...We found help. They carried her and they put us into a truck and they -they took us here."

She brushes his hair away from his forehead with both hands.

"Breathe."

"She was- she was really sick. Her leg looked bad. I left to help someone like she told me and when I came back-" He shook his head, and Lexa put her hands over his shoulders. "It's my fault."

"Aden, no."

"I shouldn't have left her!" He screams, and Lexa feels every word like a blow. "I left and now she's dead."

Dead. The words resonate inside her head, bounce around like an endless reverberation of agony that she's not going to be able to get pass, not even if she lives forever. 

"It's not your fault," she repeats, against the rawness in her throat. He shakes his head, slow, weighed down with pain. He whispers something, and it's too quiet for her to make it out.

"What was that?" she asks softly.

"I called her Clarke," he tells her, like its a shameful secret. "I hadn't been calling her mom. I wanted to make her mad and I called her Clarke."

Lexa presses her lips together, her eyes burning.

"Oh, baby." Aden hugs her again, and Lexa sinks into the embrace they both desperately need. "Aden, she knew she was your mom. And she knew you were just mad, she knew you didn't mean it. She knew that."

Aden just cried harder, and Lexa held him through it. She briefly wondered how much time had passed, just how long he'd had to be strong -all by himself. He began repeating something into her shoulder, and Lexa made it out between the sobs.

"It's just us now. It's just us now."

It feels like mercy to be able to tell him he's wrong.

"No, it's not," she tells him, and makes an herculean effort to stand up under the weight of the pain that fills her. "There's two people waiting for us right outside."


	11. Chapter 11

“Milla and Jake? They’re okay? They're...al-”

"The are." Lexa nods, interrupting him before he can say it, because it's still such a painful reality that they could've been lost forever. “They are. They’ve missed you.” 

Aden nods, a faint smile on his lips. It looks like he still doesn’t believe she’s here, and Lexa isn't sure she can believe it herself. Lexa looks over her son, the way she did when he was smaller, so much smaller than he was supposed to be for a three year old, and promised herself she wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Back then, she hadn’t realized that promise would turn into adopting him, into becoming a family like she’d never thought she’d want. 

Her son smiles, his eyes shining as he takes her in, and the relief taking over Lexa’s chest is overwhelming, but also...incomplete. Something in her cannot comprehend that Clarke isn’t here. But she can’t focus on that now.

“Let’s go see them,” she tells Aden, grabbing his hand. 

She’s worried about leaving her little ones outside for so long, when before she wouldn’t let them go to the cereal aisle by themselves at the supermarket, but as she squeezes Aden’s hand, she accepts it was necessary, worth it. All her children are alive. 

They exit the hospital and enter the throng of people outside, the heat receding now that they’re free from the confines of the hospital.

“Jake!” she starts calling out, as they descend towards the stairs. “Milla! Jake!”

“Mommy!” A little head pops up, and Aden suddenly lets go of her hand, stepping between people in his haste to get to his brother. Milla stands up next, rubbing her tiny fist across her eyes The next second, they both catch sight of Aden, and Leza siffles as sob as her oldest son picks them both up in a crushing hug, born out of desperation.

They’re together. Her children are okay, and together.

All she needs is...her wife.

She walks closer, her chest constricting as she sees Jake press kiss after kiss into Aden’s cheek, and watches Milla’s tiny fingers cling to Aden’s shirt. 

“Mom! It’s Aden!” Jake screams, reaching towards her, and Lexa takes him, holds him on her hip even though he’s getting too big.  She throws her free arm over Aden's shoulder, and breathes in easier than she has since the water hit.

 

 

Jakes plays with a few boys at the foot of the hospital stairs, while Milla dozes calmly in her arms.

Finding Aden seemed to have opposing effects on her children, and while Milla is comfortable and happy enough to sleep, Jake has newfound energy, and runs around kicking a can with a few of the local boys, and a couple of tourists, like them. They don't speak the same language, and they're all covered in cuts and scratches, but they play together all the same, their laughter bringing respite from the storm to everyone around them.

She looks at Jake, and then looks at Milla in her arms. She pushes her hair away from her face, before meeting Aden's eyes. 

She wonders if this is how it's going to be from now on. Just her and the kids. She still can't comprehend it.

She can't understand that Clarke is gone. 

She says it to herself, over and over again, but the words are meaningless, her brain doesn't process them, her hreat can't absorb them. They promised each other forever. So how can this be how it ends?

 "Are you thinking about her?" Aden asks, ever the mind-reader. He always made questions like that, straight to the point, even as a toddler. 

'Are you going to leave me too?' He'd asked back then, and Lexa had told him no, and she hadn't lied. She can't lie now, either.

"Yes," she tells him simply, tucking Milla closer against her chest. 

"I'm sorry," Aden says, and she shakes her head. It's not his fault, could never be. 

"Did you see her?" she asks, wondering if he has to live with that image, if maybe she can acompany him in it.

Aden shakes his head.

"They took her to surgery," he tells her. "When I came back she was gone." 

His voice clouds over with tears, and Lexa swallows.  It's part love and part incredulity what moves her to do what she does next. 

She needs to see Clarke again, even if her eyes will be closed, or worse, open into nothingness. She needs to see her wife one last time. 

But also, she knows if she doesn't, she'll never believe it. Her heart will never let her rest, always thinking Clarke is a step away, hiding in a corner, always just out of reach, her laughter in every bell chime she hears for the rest of her life. 

If she doesn't see her, she'll never find peace.

So she marches back into the hospital, and requests to see Clarke’s body.

 

 

She leaves Milla in Aden's arms, outside, Jake still playing nearby.

Aden promises to take care of them, after Lexa convinces him to stay put.  He needed to see her, too, her argued, but Lexa denied him. She knows the image will haunt her forever, and she craves it, but she will not let her son suffer the same fate. Clarke wouldn't want him to see her like that.

She asks at the nurse's stations, and she's directed to room after room until finally, a sweet-faced nurse speaking in perfect english, directs her to the back of the hospital, outside a room that smells of death. 

"We keep the bodies here. You're lucky, they haven't wrapped them yet and taken them outside. They'll do that tonight."

Lexa nods. She doesn't feel lucky, but a single look at the woman's face lets Lexa knows she didn't mean it like that. She looks like she feels her pain, and Lexa wonders who she lost. It seems they all lost someone.

They step inside the room, and Lexa has to cover her mouth and nose with her hand, the stench of death gripping her. 

"Here," the nurse says, and Lexa follows, her steps growing heavier. "Sure?" The nurse asks, and Lexa swallows hard before she nods. She owes Clarke this much. And she owes it to herself, too.

She needs to see her.

The nurse lifts the blanket away from the woman lying on the gurney, and Lexa almost falls to her knees.

"That’s not my wife."

 

 

The nurses flutter around her, searching for papers and speaking in rapid fire Thai, while Lexa sits in the cold steel chair and her entire world is moved off its axis yet again.

Clarke Griffin was written in the dead woman’s arm, but it wasn't Clarke.

Her hair had been dark brown instead of blonde, and she'd looked young, much to young to be the mother of her children. She was american, too, the nurse had told her, and someone must have mixed up their files -the explanations weren't important to Lexa.

Either way hope is flaring up in her chest, unstopable, all consuming.

Because if they thought Clarke was dead because they'd thought she was this woman, and Aden hadn't seen Clarke's...corpse, then there was a chance, wasn't it? A chance her wife was somewhere in this hospital, the wrong name written on her arm, and alive.

There was hope.

It almost chokes her, and a few silent tears slip down her face as she tries to get herself under control. She'd wanted to run outside with the news, to find a phone and call Abby, to tell Aden his mom might be okay -but she couldn't, and that was the hardest part. The wait until her world is either saved or burned down for good, and it's a wait she has to suffer through alone. 

"Here!" The nurse says, and Lexa immediately looks up. "Room 703. Amanda Thompson. But if the wrong name was written in that woman's arm-"

Lexa leaves before the woman finishes her sentence. 

She runs through the hallways, intent on finding the room. Her heartbeat drums in her ears so loudly that for a second she doesn't hear herself being called.

"Mom? What's wrong?!" Aden runs toward her, Milla in his arms and Jake in tow, and Lexa forces herself to stop.

"I told you to stay outside-"

"Did you find her? Did they tell you where she is?"

"Aden-"

"Mom!"

Jake stares up at them both, his eyes wide at the exchange. Milla looks around, her eyes hazy with sleep still. 

"We have a right to know," Aden says simply, and Lexa nods.

"They told me where she was, but Aden- the woman there wasn't your mom. She had Clarke's name written on her but it wasn't her."

She sees the exact second when the news hits Aden, because he puts Milla down. 

"So where is she?" He asks her. "Is she...is she okay?"

Lexa shakes her head.

"I don't know."

"Is mommy here?" Jake asks, and Milla's chin trembles at her brother's words.

"Mommy...?" her small voice pipes up, and Lexa knows then she can't leave them behind while she runs to search for her. They found Aden as a family, and they'll find Clarke, or face reality if they don't, as a family as well.

"They gave me a room," she tells Aden. "It could be nothing." She shrugs. "But there's-"

"There's a chance," Aden finishes for her, and Lexa nods. And together they go up the steps to the next floor.

They take the stairs until she sees fives on the doors, and then sixs. They finally reach the sevens, and walk through a couple doors before the one the nurse mentioned appears in front of their eyes.

She takes a fortifying breath before she finally grabs the cold metal.

"Maybe you should stay outside," she suggests, but Aden shakes his head.

"No."

She might have been the one to adopt him, and Clarke might have not raised him for as long as she did, but his stubborness? That's all her. Lexa nods, and takes a hold of the handle. She opens the door.

She lets her eyes trail over the covered feet of the woman on the gurney, and then up her body, her arm -Amanda Thompson written on it in black ink- and then her neck, where wisps of blonde her have stuck because of the sweat. She finally stares at her face, and even through the oxygen mask covering most of it, she recognizes her wife -and she looks like a corpse. Like the hundreds Lexa has seen since the water hit. 

For one heartbreaking second, she thinks she was too late.

But then Jake is running into the room and shaking Clarke’s arms and her wife's eyes open sluggishly. 

She's born again.

There's no way she can explain the overwhelming relief that floods her, that makes her knees shake and her throat close up. Clarke is here, and her chest is rising up and down, and that already is more than Lexa had dared hope for. 

"Family?" A doctor asks suddenly behind her, and Lexa steps out of the room even as it feels impossible. 

"Yes," she says raggedly through her clogged throat. "Is she okay?" she asks, begs.

His face remains impassive, his lips set in a thin line.

"Not strong for next surgery yet," he says simply, and Lexa knows enough to know that's bad, that she needs more than one surgery, that she's too weak to have it.  "Wait," he tells her, and Lexa understand that, too. That's all she has left now. Waiting.

He pats her shoulder before he moves on, to care for the patients who scream for his help, who can open their mouths and call him to their beds like Clarke can't. 

 Lexa turns back around, and allows herself to see Clarke, to closely examine her, and her heart clenches.

Clarke is looking back at her.

Aden is holding her hand, and Milla sits on the gurney now, too, her head on Clarke's thigh, and Jake rubs her leg with care -but Clarke just looks at her, and Lexa clears the room in two long strides until she's in front of her wife.

She takes the oxygen mask off carefully, and presses a kiss to Clarke’s dry, chapped lips. She never thought she would again. 

"Clarke, love," she says softly. "I'm here.” She’s crying, thick tears falling down the bridge of her nose and landing on Clarke's cheeks. 

But Clarke simply stares up at her.

 

//

 

She's dead. 

Clarke knows it the minute she opens her eyes and Lexa is there, waiting for her, as beautiful as ever. Her only grievance is that she looks hurt, and she's crying, and she doesn't understand why heaven would let her girl do such a thing. 

 "Am I dead?" she asks senselessly, and Lexa comes fully into view as she steps closer to her.

"No," she promises, and Clarke frowns. Lexa has never lied to her before. "No, no," her wife keeps repeating. "I'm here."

Clarke looks around the room she's in, and she notices Jake by her side, and Milla at the foot of the bed, her little children, her precious babies, smiling up at her. This _is_ heaven, it has to be. 

But then she feels someone squeeze her hand, and the feeling brings awareness to the rest of her body. It's Aden, holding her hand.

The haze of unconciousness  begins to clear, and Clarke's mind goes from heaven to something even more impossible -Lexa is here, and so are her other children. Somehow, they're all okay. 

"You're here," she croaks out, and Lexa smiles wide even as tears continue to fall down her face. Clarke is exhausted, so, so exhausted, but seeing Lexa here -alive- is enough to make her breathe easier.

"I am," Lexa confirms. "And Jake and Milla are with me, and Aden's here too. We're all together again."

Clarke smiles, even as her eyes slip closed.

"I can rest now," she whispers, and then someone shakes her arm. Her eyes pop open.

She’s so, so tired. So, so cold. But Aden looks alarmed and she won't have that.

"Mom. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He has tears in his eyes, too, and Clarke shakes her head as much as she can. "I'm sorry for calling you 'Clarke'," he says. "I'm sorry for fighting with you so much."

Clarke raises her other hand, now freed by Jake, and she pats Aden's hand softly. 

"It's okay," she tells him. "It...doesn't matter now." She looks around the room, feeling her energy seeping like a tree being bled out of sap. She lets go of Aden, only for her hands to fall on Jake's cheek and Milla's head. Her youngest look happy to see her, oblivious to the hospital settind and the smell of sorrow wafting through the air.

She gives them the biggest smile she can muster.

But she's so, so tired.

She looks for Lexa's eyes, and she meets the brilliant green without much effort. She raises her hand to touch Lexa's face, but she's too weak to make it. Lexa grabs her hand, and presses it against her lips first, and then her cheek.

It's hard to breathe for Clarke.

"Take..." She coughs, her chest tight. "Take care of our babies."

Lexa's eyes widen, alarmed. 

"No," she says firmly. "Clarke, don't talk like that. You're- you're going to get better and we’re going to go home. We're going home, baby."

Clarke's eyes slip closed.

There's nothing she wants more than to go home, to spend the morning with her wife and children, all cuddled together on the couch, watching cartoons that they pretend they hate but secretly love, all because Milla and Jake adore them. 

But she doesn't know if that's in the cards.

It almost feels like she waited this long, just so she could know her children were safe. And now she can rest.

She doesn't know exactly when the atmosphere in the room changes. Suddenly there are fingers on her wrist, and a bright light in her eye, and people yelling commands in a language she can't understand.

She hears Lexa's voice, and the words 'emergency surgery', and she thinks she hears her daughter crying and all she wants is to comfort her, but she doesn't know how to move her arms.

And then there's nothing at all.


	12. Epilogue

Lexa falls back against the couch, exhausted.

It's on days like this that she lets herself be tired, even as she gets up to do what's needed. Truth is, she's too young to feel as old as she does, running after Milla and trying to get her to behave, or keeping up with Jake's soccer practices, but she promised Clarke.

"Mom? Have you seen my backpack?" Aden yells, and Lexa closes her eyes. "It's on my desk!" 

She'd promised to help him look at college applications tonight, so that's another thing on her plate today. Sometimes she can't believe he's 16, and leaving the nest soon enough. She trembles in fear of the day Jake and Milla follow in his footsteps.

"Found it!" Aden's yell comes from the other side of the house, and Lexa smiles to herself. It might be a messy one, but their house did function like a well oiled machine. It was needed, especially now.

She promised Clarke.

 "Mama!" Milla yells, jumping on top of her, and Lexa gasps even as she laughs.

"What's gotten into you?" Lexa asks, rubbing her daughter's back. 

"It's too loud, I can't do my homework."

Lexa smiles. A 1st grader's homework was mostly coloring with a bit of writing simple words, but Milla took it seriously. She loved school -she took after Lexa that way. But she had a talent with painting that was all Clarke, biology be damned.

She was still surprised at how much of her she could see in their daughter.

 

 

_They wait outside._

_The doctors don't speak english, but every once in a while a nurse will walk by and help them translate whatever news there are. Lexa feels like the surgery takes too long, sitting as she is on the cold tiled floor of the hospital, her youngest children beneath each of her arms and her oldest pacing the room from one side to the other, over and over again._

_Lexa feels like Schrodinger's cat, trapped in two realities for as long as she doesn't know her wife's fate on the other side of the metal double doors. Does her family miraculously get to live through this intact? Or does she return home with her children broken, a single mother with her wife in a bag?_

_She tries to be strong for Aden, Jake and Milla, but even they must sense her trepidation because she can't calm them down, nor quiet their demands to see their other mother. Still, they have to wait._

_Jake and Milla doze through it at times, and even Aden sits down, tired of his pacing, but Lexa isn't able to do anything but stare at the doors, waiting patiently for news that will either save her or break her._

_It feels endless._

_But when it's over, finally, it's only been three hours._

 

 

"You can come do your homework here," she tells Milla, pointing to the coffee table. Milla shakes her head.

"Can you just tell him to shut up?" She begs, and Lexa laughs despite herself at the 6-year-old's strong words.

"Milla...We don't-"

"-speak like that," a voice says from the doorway. Lexa looks up to meet her wife's tired eyes, and Clarke smiles at her. "Your little brother's tummy aches," she explains. "That's why he's crying so much, sweetie."

Milla huffs.

"I wish his tummy would ache in silence," she states, before getting up from the couch and running upstairs, certainly off to look for her other brother, her partner in crime.

 

 

_She doesn't need the doctor to speak to understand what the outcome of the surgery is._

_He smiles at her, and the gesture is universal. Clarke is okay._

_They're allowed inside, and she looks even paler than before, if that's even possible, but she's alive.  Lexa feels the tight coil of fear livng in her throat loosen a little as their children take a seat by her side, and she finally allows herself to think about tomorrow, about next week, about the future in general._

_They're making it out okay, all of them._

_Lexa_ _sits_ _by_ _Clarke's_ _side_ _that_ _entire_ _first_ _night,_ _cataloging_ _each_ _of_ _her_ _shallow_ _breaths,_ _and_ _waiting_ _for_ _the_ _cell_ _phone_ _one_ _of_ _the_ _nurses_ _has_ _promised_ _her._  

_When it arrives, early the next morning, she wastes no time calling home, calling Abby. She answers on the first ring, and a desperate 'Lexa' leaves her lips._

_"Did you find them?" Abby asks, pleadingly. "Did you find my baby?"_

_Tears fill Lexa's eyes. She knows the pain in her voice keenly, the pain of a mother who believes her children are lost to her for her good. She felt it when she thought Aden was gone. The impotence was so much different than the sorrow she felt for Clarke._

_"Yes," she gasps, finally, and it almost breaks her. "They're here, they're both here. Aden is okay. Clarke just got our of surgery but she's okay, she's stable."_

_Abby's desperate cries sound through the phone, and the only reason Lexa doesn't join her is because her children are in the room, and she has to be the strong one now._

 

 

Lexa shakes her head, and Clarke chuckles. Her wife joins her on the couch.

 "How’s the munchkin?" Lexa asks softly, taking in Clarke's disheveled -but beautiful- appearance. Motherhood had always suited her, and there's a glow about her now, a mere week after she gave birth. She's as radiant as the sun.

"Asleep, finally," she tells her. "You're having the next one, lady," Clarke says, a teasing smile on her lips. "Remember what we said about tag teaming it?"

Lexa smiles. "You want another one?"

Clarke shrugs as she settles back on the cushions.

"I like prime numbers."

 Lexa laughs. "Five kids does sound kind of perfect. But maybe we should wait at least until Aden leaves for college. " Their house was loud enough with three children under the age of 10. 

"You're out of luck, cause I'm not leaving," Aden suddenly appears in the doorway. "I'm living in your basement forever."

"I thought we were looking up colleges tonight," Lexa mentions. 

Aden opens the fridge, no doubt looking for something to munch on -he'd shot up during his last growing spurth, growing taller than even Lexa, and he was like a bottomless pit these days, eating twice as much as usual and with no weight gain to show for it. 

"Nope. You're stuck with me," he jokes.

"That doesn't sound so bad," Clarke says, sighing. Aden smiles, but then winces as the rare silence of the house is pierced by a sharp wail. Gus is awake, and hell hath no fury like a newborn with colic.  "Now, _that_ sounds kind of bad," Clarke says, and moves to get up, but Aden waves her away. 

"I got it," he tells them, and runs up the stairs, taking two steps at a time in the direction of his little brother's room.

 

 

_They leave the hospital two days after Clarke gets out of surgery, as fast as the arrangements could be made. They leave Thailand a day after that._

_They land in JFK on a Tuesday morning, and Clarke is admitted to  NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital as soon as the plane touches the ground. They're all checked for their wounds, and Lexa breathes easier as her kids are given a clean bill of health._

_It's almost surreal, getting to shower and put on clean clothes on the bathroom inside Clarke's hospital room. Abby flies in and brings them clothes and Jake and Milla's toys. Lexa gets to braid her daughter's clean, sweet smelling hair, and she gets to convince Jake to put on socks and shoes. Abby hugs them all for a solid ten minutes, taking time to kiss and talk to each of her grand children, and then she takes a deep breath and goes in to see Clarke._

_Lexa doesn't intrude in their moment, but when they invite her and the kids inside, they both have tears staining their cheeks._

_Clarke develops an infection in her leg, which delays her getting discharged and them going home, but it hardly matters to Lexa where they are -as long as they're together._

 

 

"Mommy, Gus is being loud again!" Milla runs back into the living room, and jumps on the couch, immediately nestling herself in Clarke's arms.  She was their baby, and Lexa knows their little girl is resenting no longer being the youngest in the family.

Clarke kisses her forehead. 

"Maybe you can help me calm him down," Clarke offers, and Milla seems to think about it. 

"Maybe," she settles with, and Lexa bites her lip in amusement. It took her a few weeks to get used to the idea of being a big sister after they told her Clarke was pregnant, but by the time Clarke was showing, Milla had been a complete sweetheart, somehow sensing that they needed her in her best behaviour. That kind of had gone out of the window when little Augustus -Gus- had been born last week, but she's starting to settle down again, and Lexa can't wait to see just what a good big sister she'll make. 

Fast foosteps sound down the stairs, and Jake enters the room running, swiftly settling against Lexa.

"We were playing and you left!" He accuses Milla, who sticks her tongue out at him.

"Be nice," Lexa commands, and looks up as Aden enter the room, the baby in his arms.

"I got him," he says. He hands Lexa the squirming baby, and she receives him with open arms. Clarke had him all morning, she deserves some reprieve. Plus -they did promise to tag team it. She kisses Gus' soft forehead and quietly shushes him, and after a few moment he begins to quiet down.

"That's a miracle if I ever saw one," Clarke tells her, staring at the nearly sleeping baby in her arms. Lexa shakes her head.

She looks around, at Milla and Jake, sitting by their side, at Aden, looking for food in the kitchen, at her beautiful wife...this is the miracle, she thinks. Surviving and moving forward, with nothing but scars to show for the worst week of their lives, but which made them stronger in the end.  

Her family, together, despite all the odds 

It’s heaven.


End file.
